


A Nexus of Love and History

by BlazeOnMars



Series: A Nexus of Love and History [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Canonical Character Death, Escape, Kidnapping, M/M, Omega Desmond, Slow Burn, alpha Ezio, mentions of normalized bigotry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazeOnMars/pseuds/BlazeOnMars
Summary: The year is 2012. Desmond Miles is an omega in a world that doesn't want alphas or omegas anymore and, when he's kidnapped, he's certain he's going to be used for his breeding capacity until he dies. What he winds up involved in doesn't have anything to do with his presentation, at first, and everything to do with the cult he ran away from at sixteen, a cult fighting an imaginary war he didn't believe in.The year is 1476. Ezio Auditore da Firenze is a recently presented alpha riding high on the good life in Florence when he begins seeing a strange figure. A strange figure nobody else can see. But when his family is betrayed, he must become more than a noble Florentine alpha if he is to survive: he must become an Assassin. And with the help of the strange figure, maybe he can become all he needs to be.
Relationships: Ezio Auditore da Firenze/Desmond Miles
Series: A Nexus of Love and History [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1530317
Comments: 142
Kudos: 512





	1. In which Desmond is kidnapped, then escapes, but isn't freed

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a very, very slow burn. Ezio isn't even in this first chapter, except as an infant. Unfortunately, it means we've got a long way to go before we get to the romance because I absolutely love stories where it's the slow building trust of friendship to lovers and this is absolutely my own wish fulfillment.
> 
> If my outline goes to plan, this should have about 24 chapters. But we'll see how long it actually takes me to write and post all of that. If all else fails, I can post my plot outline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would apologize for how long this got but, uh, I'm not actually sorry. I love Desmond, immensely, so when I had the opportunity to worldbuild and characterize, I took it. Right now my tags are kind of sparse, but I'll add more as things get going.

[Date: September 1, 2012]  
  
Something's wrong with his vision. He can't see, flickering red and grey and white mashed together and zipping across his eyes faster than he can follow. It gives him a headache, splitting through his skull like an axe. He thinks there are people surrounding him, fawning over him—women maybe, scantily clad with bare shoulders and stomachs and thighs, and his immediate response is to flee, reflex so ingrained it may as well be instinct screaming at him to get out from so many people he doesn't know, can't see, and _can't predict_.  
  
But when he tries to run, all he does is go in circles, staggering when his legs never go as far as he expects and he almost topples over, surrounded by the women. He can't see the sky, he can't feel the grass, there's nothing _there_ , and the more quickly he moves, rolling as he falls, the worse the pain in his head gets.  
  
"I can't anchor to the memory," a woman reports, worried and urgent, "there's too much psychological trauma. He's rejecting!"  
  
He looks around but the women surround him don't look like they said anything, and as hard as he tries, he cannot find the speaker.  
  
"Subject Seventeen, I need you to relax," soothes a man with a nasal, raspy voice.  
  
He tries to do as the man requests, though he doesn't know who or what Subject Seventeen is. Maybe him. True instinct rides him, instincts that tell him softly and quietly to obey and so he stands as still as he can, letting the women mill around him, all of them reaching at once, but even that makes his headache spike, and he clutches his temples reflexively, eyes dropping closed with a groan. He just wants it to _stop_.  
  
"I'll try and stabilize it."  
  
The woman, again, and he glances around through squinted eyes. He feels confident that the speaker is not in his line of sight, though she sounds so clear she should have had to be standing next to him. There is no way for him to make a guess as to what she is stabilizing though.  
  
"Focus," the man commands. "Listen to the sound of my voice, Seventeen. Recognize that what you're seeing isn't real, just a picture of the past. It can't hurt you."  
  
The man's nasal voice is just as crisp and clear as the woman, but he is certain there is not a male figure among these cooing women. At last, the man's words parse through the pain, and he can only grimace. _Not real?_ He thinks. _All of this is far too real!_ The pain, the phantom touch of fingertips across his robes; how is it the man says it can't hurt him, when that's all there is left in his head.  
  
"Damn it, it's not working! We're losing it! Heart rate dropping!" shouts the woman.  
  
He curls over his knees and keens. He'll take his hidden blade to his own skull if only this agony would stop!  
  
"That's enough, Miss Stillman. The first time is never easy!"  
  
The first time for what? He will not suffer this again. If this is some Templar torture, he will end himself before they can try a second time.  
  
"We need to pull out! _Now_!"  
  
Nothing makes sense. The woman's words are a noisy jumble that washes over him uselessly.  
  
"Very well. Seventeen, we're going to try and bring you out."  
  
There is a swooping sensation in his gut, the same feeling as when he makes a Leap of Faith, and the white and red and grey in his vision goes dark.  


* * *

  
Desmond comes aware in a moment, in the space between his rabbiting heartbeats, with the headache is still pounding behind his eyes. He's never felt pain like this. It feels worse than the hangover after his _real_ twenty-first birthday, worse than the heat sickness during his second heat, when he'd been sixteen and homeless and stupid. He wants to throw up from the pain but his iron stomach makes that impossible. It takes him several slow, deep breathes before he can think but, when he can, he realizes two things simultaneously.  
  
One: whatever that experience had been, with the colors and the women, Desmond hadn't thought like himself, almost like his brain had been reset to a different user's parameters. The thought of these people being able to take him out of his head and replace him with someone else leaves him even chiller than the cold of the room, anxiety and fear clinging to his lungs in panting breaths.  
  
His instincts kick in, remembering the man and woman who had spoken to him, and he pulls for the scents in the air around him, immediately getting two. Both are faint, pale, lacking the added wash of pheromones that make alpha and omega scents so distinct and powerful. Betas, then. The first scent he gets is, for a beta's scent, overpowering with antiseptic and cleaning chemicals, and Desmond nearly coughs. He gets the other scent on the next breath and goes perfectly still. Lightly floral, nothing distinct. And over the top of that—  
  
Rotten copper. Spilled blood gone cold. This person has been involved in more than a few deaths for the scent to linger, and so powerfully that Desmond can feel it coat his tongue. It isn't the same as the scents of the hospital workers, or the doctors, that Desmond has met, where they smell like the clean tang of _freshly_ spilled blood. Whoever's scent this is has personally ended lives, and with a vengeance, with purpose and forethought. Whoever's scent this is, he'll have to be extremely careful around them.  
  
Two: he doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know how he ended up on this strange, almost medical table, and he doesn't know what happened. The last thing he vaguely remembers is the late night of finishing another shift at Bad Weather, the long walk back to the room he rents under a fake name, and then nothing. Put together, there's only one conclusion and it's almost more frightening than the idea of someone being able to—to— _uninstall_ him from his brain.  
  
He was kidnapped.  
  
With pain in his head like he's never felt, Desmond forces his eyes open, closing them immediately at the bright, sterile lights above him that cut through his skull. He tries again, squinting first and then opening them fully once he's adjusted. A woman stands near his feet, at a high-tech work station, pale blonde hair hanging loose around her face and draped over one shoulder as she types furiously on a keyboard. She could be anywhere from early twenties to early forties, with nothing to go on but her face.  
  
On his other side, a wiry man, easily sixty years old if he was a day, with salt and pepper hair kept short and a full beard the same color and wearing a bright white lab coat, gestures effusively to the woman.  
  
"There, see!" he says, a little smugness in his nasal voice. "I told you he'd be fine."  
  
Desmond sits up with a groan, one hand coming up to grip his aching temple reflexively, and he pulls for the scents around him again as a distraction. These two must both be betas and he curses silently that a beta's scent is too thin to carry many markers of their emotions, and they must both spend a lot of time in this room because Desmond can't filter out which scent belongs to the blonde woman and which one belongs to the older man.  
  
The woman looks up from her workstation to give the man a flat look and then turns to Desmond. "Are you okay?" she asks. Her voice has gone as chill as the room, perfectly level, and the difference between the passionate arguing during that experience and this dispassionate check-in gives Desmond whiplash.  
  
"No, I'm not okay!" Desmond snaps, his fear and frustration in control, reducing Desmond's ability to control himself down to reactive response only. "You bastards kidnapped me!"  
  
"Now, now, Seventeen," says the older man with a condescending little wave of his hand, "I just saved your life."  
  
"Saved my life?" Despite the pain in his head, Desmond pulls himself off the almost-medical table and looms threateningly over the man in the lab coat. Bad Weather doesn't need him to be a bouncer often, but he's never forgotten the lessons of his early childhood or his time on the streets and he knows how to stand to look his most impressive, his most dangerous. "You strapped me into that _thing_!" He throws one hand behind him at the table in a sharp motion.  
  
There must be six inches of height difference between Desmond and the researcher, and although Desmond wears a white hoodie a size too big and loosely fitting jeans to disguise that he's is in excellent shape, the man doesn't appear bothered by him in the least.  
  
The assistant, still tapping away at the keyboard, jerks her hands up as Desmond moves and Desmond can see the aborted motion for what it is from out of the corner of his eye. If there had been a gun in her hands, he would be dead. It's extremely effective at killing the budding thoughts of escape. No mere lab tech has a reflex like that ingrained into her, not unless this is some sort of military research facility.  
  
The man turns away with a shake of his head and another condescending hand wave, and explains patronizingly, "Animus, Subject Seventeen. It's an Animus." If Desmond had a weapon—fuck, even if he didn't have a weapon—he could take the man out in a second flat, but nothing in his body language tells Desmond this man knows how much danger he's in.  
  
More alarming, he may know some of Desmond's capabilities and he just may not care. The dichotomy between these two is exacerbating his headache to new levels.  
  
"Who are you?" asks Desmond desperately, scuttling back a few steps as his instincts surge with the desire to have something fortified at his back. "What the fuck do you want with me?"  
  
The man turns, slowly, to look at Desmond with the kind of blankness in his eyes he'd seen too often growing up, not just on the Farm but in the slums of New York as a recently presented teenager with no place to go: dismissive, calculating, disdainful. Desmond's life means less to this man than the dirt under his fingernails, to be put up with until it's time to use and then dispose of him. "You have information we need."  
  
"Information? I'm a bartender, for Christ's sake! What do you want me to do—teach you how to mix a martini?" There's a fluttering down Desmond's spine and it screams of danger. It's the sort of instinct that's never been wrong, despite the prejudice against it, and Desmond listens to it now but. It doesn't look like an opportunity to get out of here is coming any time soon.  
  
The beta man gives the blonde woman a nod, who sighs and begins typing again. The cadence is different than earlier but Desmond's never had much experience with computers, and unfortunately, he wouldn't know if she's typing in kill orders or… Well, he doesn't even know what the options are, with a computer that high-tech.  
  
"We know who you are. Or rather, we know what you are," the man says; his tone is ominous, far more threatening than Desmond managed to be and with only five words.  
  
There is exactly one thing that comes to Desmond's mind that this man could be talking about: his presentation. If they kidnapped him because he's an omega, his life is effectively over; even in 2012, alphas and omegas who were too blatant about their presentation could be killed by their neighbors, by the police, by their doctors, and nobody would stop it. In a medical research facility, omegas are little better than the womb inside them, and Desmond fights the urge to wrap his arms around his waist. Nine years in New York, moving from place to place, never setting down roots, never making friends, never having a backup plan, and somehow these people have managed to discover what he'd learned to hide so well.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Desmond says flatly.  
  
"Don't play coy with me, Seventeen," tsks the man, "there isn't time. You're an Assassin."  
  
Shock washes through Desmond with each pump of his pounding heart.  
  
He'd never believed anything his parents had said growing up; how could he, when he never left the Farm, didn't have any experience beyond what he'd been indoctrinated into? The tales of how Templars would torture an Assassin for information, how the Templars were always watching, always knew.

How much they wanted to control humanity.

But nothing seemed different, to Desmond, after he'd run away except that the Templars had become 'anyone on the planet' and the Assassins were the secret knowledge that Desmond was a male omega. If there were really Templars out in the world, they didn't make any waves in Desmond's.  
  
That his father's crazy ravings are now the cause of his kidnapping and not his secondary gender… The omega swallows hard.  
  
The beta man continues without seeing Desmond's internal struggle. "And whether you realize it or not, you've got something my employers want, locked in that empty head of yours."  
  
"I'm not an Assassin though, I never was!" There's a fine shiver that's taken up place in Desmond's bones, under his sternum specifically, vibrating with alarm and stress and an ache that he's never felt before.  
  
"Yes," the older man agrees, glancing at Desmond with bored contempt. "Your file indicated as much. Something about an escape." He even goes so far as to make the air-quotes around the word escape, with a scornful little laugh. "Fortunate for us or you'd already be dead."  
  
Desmond's breath catches in his throat for a long moment then whooshes out as he sighs, his shoulders drooping. He wants nothing more than to escape but the room is penned in with technological doors with locks he can't pick, and, glinting malevolently from nearly every corner, are camera lenses. After a lingering silence, Desmond asks quietly, "What do you want from me?"  
  
"For you to do as your told," commands the man immediately, with a gesture to the faux-medical bed behind Desmond. "The Animus will allow us to locate what we need. Once we have it—" there's a pause that makes Desmond more nervous "—you'll be free to go."  
  
The pain in his head spikes at the mention of its cause and fear with it. The instinctive denial is tumbling out of Desmond's mouth before he can do anything, not that he would really try. "I'm not getting back in that!"  
  
The beta man smiles and it is _vicious_ ; his tone all but dripping malice as he hisses, "Then we'll induce a coma, and continue anyway, Seventeen." Not even the street gangs running New York's underbelly when Desmond was so young or his father's brutal trainings at eight years old scared him as much as this man, this researcher or scientist or madman, who's smile widens another degree with a suddenly bloodthirsty edge. "Once we're done, you'll be left to die."  
  
As quickly as he turned threatening, the older man turns to his assistant and says, almost dismissively, "The only reason Seventeen's still conscious is because we've determined this approach can save us time."  
  
The blonde looks up, briefly, from the screen she still works at, but says nothing. Desmond, who had thought of appealing to her sense of justice and morality, passes those thoughts on with a mental wave. If she has any problems with kidnapping, or what is essentially torture, or threats of murder, she doesn't show it on her passive, cold expression.  
  
"So what will it be, Seventeen?" Desmond's captor asks. "Live? Or die?"  
  
To Desmond, that question is worth less than the air used to ask it—he has done far worse than go along with kidnappers for a _chance_ at living. No matter how his skull wants to come apart at the seams, no matter his apprehensions about this machine, or his fear that they'll use him in other ways, he bows his head and gives in to the inevitable. He lays back down, watching as the glass screen slides out of the table's edge to cover his face, notes the Abstergo logo, and then—  


* * *

  
There are two distinct parts of him, and a headache covering both, when he begins to come to: the modern bartender and the ancient Assassin. To say there's a fight for dominance would be so inaccurate as to be laughable—the bartender, passive to begin with, is quickly subsumed by the Assassin, who spits Arabic curses at the knowledge that he's a prisoner. He groans, all he can do when his body won't respond yet and his tongue takes up his entire mouth and more.  
  
"Seventeen's experiencing a far better adoption rate than any of the previous subjects!" a nasal voice says gleefully; the language is not Arabic and half his brain struggles to make sense of the words. The bartender cringes from man's voice instinctively, spurring another round of hissing fury from the Assassin as understanding filters through the two disjointed parts.  
  
The Assassin may have been demoted, everything taken from him save his life and Al Mualim had tried to take even that, but he _is_ a weapon, and this man should be wary of the Assassin finding an opportune moment, no matter that the bartender seeks escape over the death of his captor.  
  
"I'm still ending it," interjects the woman's chill voice. "It's gone on way too long."  
  
To the Assassin, such words are indicative of torture but before there can be another surge of rage, the bartender provides the mental image of a table, an apparatus, and the knowledge that these two have threatened to take him out of the picture entirely if he resists. It stills the Assassin in a way nothing else has and, at last, the two opposing parts begin to come together into one whole.  
  
"What's another hour or two? We're nowhere near close enough yet!"  
  
"Why don't we discuss this in the conference room?"  
  
Desmond opens his eyes, which takes all the willpower he has, in time to watch the blonde woman glare coldly at her superior and appeal without sounding pleading, "Warren, please." He can't even steady his brain enough to parse the emotions in the pale beta scents the two put out and Desmond blinks, slowly.  
  
The man, Warren apparently—the part of his brain that's been rewritten as Altaïr is far too pleased to have a name—begrudgingly follows the woman's order and they make their slow way into the conference room. Desmond finds it strange that the conference room, blocked as it is with another technological marvel for the door, has a large bay window. Then he considers, as the woman shoots him a look through that window, that it's probably there so they can watch him. Or, the other subjects before him, really.  
  
It isn't the bartender who stands—on wobbly, coltish legs that seem too long and too skinny—and tries to find a way to overhear their conversation, but the Assassin driven by a need to have as much information at his disposal as possible, finding what he wants in the bathroom of his pristine, clinical cell. There, he clambers silently onto the countertop and presses as close to the vent in the ceiling as he can, listening carefully.  
  
"I don’t appreciate you questioning my authority in front of the subject!" shouts Warren, and the volume makes his voice shrill. "There's a word for that: insubordination!"  
  
"And if we lose another subject, we have to start all over! There's a word for that, too: I believe it's called _stupid_." The woman, and even as she argues, her voice never seems to come out of it's freezing cold tone.  
  
"I don't set the deadlines, Lucy, I'm just smart enough not to challenge them." Warren sounds suddenly exhausted, and with a darkness to his tone that hadn't been there even as he threatened the bartender, he adds, "Do you want to end up like Leila?"  
  
Desmond has no idea who Leila is but Lucy clearly must because there's a long, pregnant pause before Lucy says diplomatically, "I know the accident has everyone on edge, but if we push too hard, we'll have nothing."  
  
An accident? It doesn't sound terribly fresh, the woman's tone too modulated for something that had only just happened, but it's something the Assassin folds away to consider later, that pathological need for knowledge coming to the fore. The key to their escape may be in any tiny piece of information.  
  
"We have nothing now!" There's a sound, like the beta man drawing in a hissing breath before it's cut off.  
  
"Not yet," interjects Lucy, "but like you pointed out, Warren, Seventeen's adoption rate is substantially better than projected. I'll see what I can do to lengthen the sessions without compromising the subject."  
  
"Good," Warren says mulishly. "There isn't time for coddling."  
  
Desmond makes a point of looking around his cell—the desk, the full bed, the locked wardrobe—when Warren steps to the door. It's a concentrated effort to keep the Assassin implanted in his brain from trying to lunge for the man and his hands flex uselessly in his jacket pocket, the only place he could think to put them where he could disguise his uneasy movements.  
  
"We're done for the day, Seventeen," declares Warren, and he turns to leave without waiting for any kind of acknowledgement from Desmond. The attitude of dismissal is one Desmond hasn't missed, but better dismissed than dead. Instead, he follows Warren out into the Animus room, watching as the only other door out of the room opens, and immediately closes with a technological hiss.  
  
Lucy stands at the computer attached to the Animus, working diligently, until Desmond's soft steps reach her. Despite her efforts to keep him alive, she doesn't seem pleased he's interrupting her. "Did you need something?" she asks.  
  
"How did you find me? I mean, Abstergo's a drug company, I thought, and I haven't seen another Assassin in ten years," says Desmond, hoping against hope that Lucy will answer. It doesn't change the fact that he's locked up here, but knowing how Abstergo found him might let him keep off their radar once he's free. If he ever gets free, he considers bleakly.  
  
"The thing we're looking for," Lucy explains, still just as cold as the room around her and almost as blank, looking at Desmond only long enough for him to realize she's answering his question at all before returning her gaze to the computer screen, "traces back to a few select individuals who all have significant ties to the Assassin Order, past and present.  
  
"Abstergo is only nominally a drug company, and has many other connections so they can find the people whose ancestors tie back to at least one, though preferably more, of the individuals we need. For people that use their real names, or apply for credit cards or licenses of any kind, that's enough for Abstergo. I can't say anything more."  
  
Desmond feels each individual hair on his body raise at Lucy's invariably blasé explanation and the sinking knowledge that it was his foolish early birthday present to himself that got him in this situation. A motorcycle license, that's what did him in. Even faked—it wasn't like he had a real birth certificate to show the DMV—and under a fake name because Desmond hadn't ever used his real name since leaving the Farm and had only ever dealt in cash. He couldn't trust a paper trail not to lead his father straight to him. Only it wasn't his father, but something much worse.  
  
It doesn't matter to her how he got—got—discovered and acquired, the Assassin inserts when the bartender can't find the language; all that matters to this beta woman is that he's now a subject and she and her boss are on a tight time limit. She's as dismissive as the doctor and doesn’t look up when Desmond shifts his weight and walks back into his cell, suddenly and completely exhausted. He can't bring himself to care that the cell closes and locks behind him, that there's a sandwich and a bottle of water on the desk, or that he knows he's going to toe the line and do what he's told, just like Warren wants, not ask too many questions.  
  
As Desmond collapses on the bed fully clothed, freezing with terror and passing out anyway, he and the part of his brain now Altaïr know exactly one thing: unless they somehow get very, very lucky, they're going to die.  


* * *

  
[September 6, 2012]  
  
Betrayal not his own sits under his ribs like a tumor. Time and the experience of now six days as Altaïr has given Desmond the tools to lance it, until Altaïr's betrayal at Al Mualim's treachery— _preaching that peace was to be embraced when he ordered it at the point of the hidden blade_ , hisses Altaïr, _how could he not choke on the hypocrisy?_ —joins Desmond's sense of violation on the Assassin's behalf. Desmond has spent more time as Altaïr than as himself, feeling more and more unmoored inside his head with the endless, snide input the Syrian beta adds about nearly everything when Desmond is not in the Animus.  
  
And yet the divide between them has never been so silent. With so little of Desmond's own self to hold onto, he's been relying on Altaïr to keep things together until he can fall apart in his dreams, ripped bloody by the dark work Altaïr does during the day in the Animus. Vaguely, Desmond recalls Lucy's early concern that being in the Animus too long would change him—which it most certainly has—and Desmond barely feels comfortable admitting to himself that he's not truly sure he minds. Altaïr is a man of presence, of authority, larger than life even without a body. For him not to be there?  
  
It leaves Desmond in the reality of his presentation, subsumed by the hormones that plague him, swimming in the extra knowledge he gets from the scents put off by his captors, the tiny markers that indicate feelings, the lingering aroma of food. Despite having dealt with a heightened sense of smell for almost ten years, it all feels new again, as if he's just come into being an omega and it leaves him nauseous like he hasn't been since sixteen. It's the one thing he does not enjoy about having Altaïr in his head, this unfamiliarity with his own body.  
  
He sighs and goes lax on the Animus' table, choosing to linger and let the ever-present headache wear off some, which is particularly vicious today after the Animus practically ejected him, flashing red and grey and white across the screen in streaky layers.  
  
From a distance and muffled, Desmond hears Warren say, "—we're close." He manages to make the words both fretful and angry at once, just on the edge of too sycophantic that Desmond knows they were not said to Lucy.  
  
"—not a lot of time, Vidic," responds another voice. The call must be on conference and the quality poor, because Desmond can only make a guess that it's a man speaking. Normally, the part of Desmond now Altaïr would add his own input but there's still only a disquieting lack.  
  
"—understand there's a narrow margin, you know—"  
  
The more Desmond pokes at the void where Altaïr should be, the more the headache hurts, and the easier it is to lose the train of Warren's conversation. Not like it would do any good, but Desmond has had his own childhood instinct for information compounded by Altaïr's nearly fanatical need to have every piece of knowledge he can get his hands on. Desmond tries to settle himself in his body, listen to the last of Warren's conversation.  
  
"And when it's done?" asks the other voice, and the tone flashes red through Desmond's vision like what Altaïr could do with the Eagle Vision.  
  
Warren mumbles indistinctly and then, after a brief pause, asserts, "Things will be taken care of."  
  
Desmond already knows Warren is a few shots short of an Old Fashioned so the casual way the old beta researcher promises to deal with Desmond—really, the only thing he can assume, after a statement like that—doesn't even bother him. He already knows, if Abstergo wants him taken out, there's nothing he can do, not with whatever's wrong with his cell allowing Warren into the room to loom creepily over his bed without waking him.  
  
Despite his upbringing on the Farm, and then living homeless in New York, Desmond has never felt more vulnerable than he does in these rooms, with these betas who would happily see him sedated or dead if it still got them their results. Sure, Lucy acted like an inside informant, but something about it felt off, to Altaïr and to Desmond, and they never felt like they were getting the whole story.  
  
With a low exhalation, Desmond opens his eyes to see the strange Abstergo screen start to retract, as if sensing the impatience in the bartender's limbs. He wants to be done with this situation and he's so close to finding whatever it is that the Templar's want; for the Animus to go haywire like that can only mean interference and that can only come from Lucy. He ducks under the retracting edge and sits up quickly, ignoring the spinning in his head as he says, carefully keeping his face tipped so the cameras can't pick up the movement of his lips, "I think there's something wrong with the Animus."  
  
Lucy looks up from her workstation fast enough to make her blonde hair bounce and there's a frown creasing her expression. "Nope," she replies firmly. "It's working fine."  
  
Desmond rocks back a little, at her sharp rebuke, but he has to keep trying. "I'm pretty sure it ejected me—"  
  
The look Lucy gives him stills the air in his lungs and she enunciates each word carefully; Desmond is used to being talked over, by now, but the dismissal still hurts. "I'm pretty sure you should shut up. If they find this treasure that Altaïr had seen, they'll use it to change the world, and not in a good way—change the way we live, the way we think. The way we _are_. You've heard Warren's… lectures, how we need 'order' and 'control,' and they're going to give it to us whether we want it or not."  
  
The lectures that had only confirmed to the omega that the older beta is far from sane, indoctrinated to these ideas that somehow people need order, need direction, that the atrocities being committed now are somehow worse than the atrocities from years ago. Desmond's not sure he agrees, really; some places are bad, certainly, but to say that everything is? It's the same all-or-nothing mentality that drove him from the Farm: either humanity has no controls, the way the Assassin's want, or they're going to be controlled by one group, the way the Templars do.  
  
Neither answer seems quite right, in Desmond's limited opinion, but he's only one stupid, uneducated omega. What can he know?  
  
"And what does Altaïr have to do with that? The, what was it, Piece of Eden? Looks like it was at Masyaf. Why don't they just go get it?" Desmond asks, hesitant. Because the AltaÏr inside him—who he knows as if he had been born in 1167, in Masyaf, to Umar Ibn-La'Ahad himself—would never allow the subjugation of humanity and this Piece of Eden must be very powerful, if both Al Mualim and Robert de Sablé want it so badly. To think it somehow ended up with Altaïr and he didn't immediately destroy it makes Desmond almost wonder more.  
  
"It's not that simple," responds Lucy dismissively and looks again at the screen in front of her. Desmond snorts to himself: nothing with this whole mess ever is. "They had the Piece he had but it was destroyed. They're hoping your genetic memories can show where the others are."  
  
Desmond takes a reflexive step back, nearly stumbling, as the shock hits him. He hasn't seen what the Piece of Eden is even capable of but something about it scares him, just as badly as being in Abstergo's clutches does, and the thought that there could be more of these things makes him want to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him.  
  
Lucy, typing away again, doesn't even look up, just keeps talking, calm and cold, "We have to make sure they don't get that last memory."  
  
"And how am _I_ supposed to help with that?" shouts Desmond suddenly, and his helplessness gets the best of him, makes him angry, boils his blood in his veins and he channels the sort of anger that drove Altaïr after his demotion. "I don't know what anyone's planning, except that at the end of this, they kill me! I'm screwed! What, exactly, do you want me to do?" Because he doesn't have any control here, doesn't have any way to keep these people from trawling through his mind; he's a body to fill the Animus, and the fact that Abstergo doesn't even want him for his breeding capacity…  
  
The implications of that are almost as frightening as the Piece of Eden.  
  
Finally, the blonde beta looks up, her fingers stilling on her keyboard, and the blue of her eyes is as chill as her voice. Desmond, with a shiver down his spine, gets the sensation that she can see right through him. "It's not as bad as it seems." Then she slowly lifts her left hand off her workstation and places it against her chest, with the ring finger tucked away. "Just try and have a little faith."  
  
It's a shape Desmond has seen months of, in the Animus: she's mimicking the old Order's sacrifice of their ring finger. She's trying to tell him, he guesses, that she's on his side, though he isn't sure if he really believes it. Desmond makes a split-second, instinct-driven decision to trust her, at least for now. His goal is still to get away from all this but he has to survive first, and she might be willing to help him do that.  
  
"Okay," Desmond whispers. "Okay, what do you need me to do?"  
  
There's the faintest warmth to the curve of her mouth, and it's the first he's seen since he'd been kidnapped. "Rest up. You'll need the energy."  


* * *

  
[September 8, 2012]  
  
Desmond couldn't stop seeing the Piece of Eden at work. The images of Altaïr held up like a pig for slaughter by the power of the Apple, the physical holograms Al Mualim could conjure, the copies of the Old Man of the Mountain—they lingered behind his eyelids, tormented his dreams. No wonder the Templars wanted this thing. Even Altaïr, the most ridiculously stubborn person Desmond has ever known, was nearly powerless against it. It didn't help that ever since that last use of the Apple in Altaïr's memories, where he'd seen that map of the world and the markings of where other Pieces of Eden might be, the version of the ancient beta Assassin had been utterly silent.  
  
And the Eagle Vision, the blood-drawn markings all over his room. He hadn't had a chance to use the Vision on Lucy or Vidic, though there was no question the beta man would have a red nimbus, Desmond thought, but he could admit, at least to himself, he was curious to see how Lucy appeared. His Leap of Faith to trust the blonde woman had been good, at least: she'd kept him alive. For now.  
  
The ceiling is incredibly boring, but it's better to stare at the bright white tiles than try to sleep. It's almost novel, after a week, for him to be sitting around without something happening kicking the adrenaline through his body, not to mention for him to be alone in his head. Desmond twitches his legs to shake out a tightness in his knee, laces his hands over his stomach, and settles in to wait. With the way Vidic had stormed out, either the man would be back to kill him and tie up that loose end before they formed their new world order, or—  
  
There's the technological click and hiss of the door and Desmond is up off the bed almost before the door is open. Lucy sticks her head in, the end of her ponytail swinging over her shoulder, and there's a flush on her cheeks Desmond has never seen before. "We have to go," she orders, leaving on the last word. As he follows her out into the main Animus room, he sees it's not just her hair being pulled up that's different, but her clothes, too—not the white button up and black pencil skirt that he'd expected, but a tight, white paneled shirt and jeans.  
  
The shirt has a splatter of blood over her waist.  
  
"Is that—Lucy, what's—" Desmond starts to ask, standing across the Animus from the woman and watching as she starts typing, frantically, far faster than she ever had before or after the sessions in Altaïr's memories. She cuts him off with a shake of her head, sending her hair swaying.  
  
"There's no time." Her fingers fly across the keyboard for another second and then she gestures towards the Animus; Desmond has no idea why he's doing what he's doing but he knows a nonverbal order when he sees one and lies down on the apparatus. "We have _maybe_ ten minutes before they figure out what I've done and, if we're not out of here by then…" There's a long pause, even her typing falling silent, and then she shakes her head and the sounds of the keyboard resume.  
  
 _We're leaving_ , Desmond thinks to himself, even as the screen slides out and over his head, and his elation is beyond anything he's ever felt. He has a chance.  
  
The memory he falls into isn't of Masyaf, he doesn't feel the strange disconnect of being replicated in someone else's body with their thoughts running tandem with his own, feeling Altaïr as a person inside him and out at once. He's just himself, hoodie and pants and all, and there's the strangest sensation as he appears in a whirl of golden sparks in the corner of a lavish bedroom.  
  
It is full of brightly colored textiles, a gigantic bed with posts at each corner holding up heavy-looking, dark colored fabric, and then Desmond realizes there are people moving about the room, three women wearing what Desmond would call—well—Renaissance clothing, really. Layered dresses of obscenely bright colors that drag along the floor and with sleeves down to their wrists, but yet with low, scooping necklines to show off the tops of their breasts; he'd always wondered why people thought the Middle Ages were prudish when fashion allowed dresses like these.  
  
There are a number of scents on the air and as Desmond takes a deep breath, he notices that the underlying scent is a twined set of alpha-omega, nothing like he's ever smelled from his own time, and Altaïr's sense of smell wasn't strong enough to get details like this. Two of the women are omegas, but the last is a beta, and he starts seeing linens and towels, and then he hears the screaming. On the giant bed, a woman who smells like the omega half of the mingled set is lying on her back and she's heavily pregnant, stomach full and round that speaks of impending labor—  
  
Or current labor, Desmond realizes with a jolting half step forward, feeling a strange sensation as he accidentally puts his foot in the way of one of the women and they _go through him_. He knows none of these women can see him, has no idea he literally appeared out of nowhere, so he slinks through the bustle to lean against the wall next to the bed, by the omega woman's head, in time to see the infant she delivers into the world. The midwife draws the baby up into her arms and tells the new mother, "It's a boy!" The nurses all share beaming grins for a moment, congratulating the woman, and then realize something's wrong.  
  
Desmond's heart clenches when the baby lies, silent and still, and he whispers to himself, "Come on, come on, come on…" falling into Italian to match the others around him without realizing.  
  
The mother is staring, can't seem do anything else, when the door to the bedroom flies open and a man strides in quickly. He's luxuriously dressed—by Desmond's estimation—breathing a little hard, sweat at his temples, and the scent he puts off marks him both as an alpha, and the alpha to this woman's omega. _A mated pair_ , Desmond thinks, rather in awe despite the horrific circumstances of the stillborn child.  
  
"Oh, my love!" the alpha cries, and goes to the woman immediately, who's trembling arm rises from the bed to greet him. "I'm sorry, I was at the bank when they told me!" He presses a few quick kisses to the pulse point on his omega's wrist and the motion seems somehow ritual, to Desmond, before the man asks, "Did I miss it? Am I too late?" The woman shakes her head, before the alpha turns and sees the midwife holding the motionless infant.  
  
"Give him here," he says, and his voice is tight with something that sounds like pain. He takes the baby carefully, at first, and then gives him the tiniest jostle in his hands.  
  
"Giovanni?" the omega asks, and her tears clog up her voice.  
  
The alpha, Giovanni, looks up from the baby and one hand twitches under the baby's shoulders, as if he stilled a motion. "Shh, Maria, don't cry. It will be alright." Then he lifts the baby up to him, tips his head down, and drags his nose across the baby's still bloody cheek, murmuring with a low, but powerful, voice, "Awaken, son! You are an Auditore, a fighter, of a legacy of fighters. So fight!"  
  
Desmond pushes off from the wall and goes to the alpha's side, the better to see the baby, and even though it won't do anything, he presses hard on the baby's chest, like he'd seen in those CPR videos on YouTube what felt like eons ago. He's expecting his hand to go through the baby's body and is tremendously surprised when it doesn't. "Come on," Desmond breathes, and he's going to start crying too, if this kid doesn't live. "Come on!" He presses again—  
  
And the baby spasms, letting out a wailing cry that splits the uncomfortable silence that had built in the room. "Listen to him!" Giovanni shouts immediately, unaware of the ghostly figure that falls back against the wall and presses the back of his hand to his mouth with relief. "What a fine set of lungs!" He holds the squalling infant down towards Maria, who rolls onto one shoulder so she can skim her fingers over the baby.  
  
"And what shall we call him, my alpha?" The swelling joy in Maria's tone is so obvious, Desmond can only imagine the phrase could be replaced with 'my love' or some other pet name and the omega's tone would be the same. Not just a mated pair driven together by instinct, but a love match, and something inside the ghostly omega aches.  
  
Giovanni doesn't hesitate and declares to the room, "Ezio! Ezio Auditore da Firenze!"  
  
Desmond feels a tug deep in his gut and somehow knows his time's up, and he vanishes in a swirl of gold flecks.  
  
His head throbs when he opens his eyes to the Animus screen, which begins to retract slowly, and the sense of Altaïr returns in his brain as a discontent grumble that adds a new dimension to the pain plaguing him.  
  
" _Fuck_ ," someone hisses, furiously, and Desmond jerks up, only just missing hitting his head on the screen, and looks around for the speaker. There's no one in the room but Lucy, and he watches her slam a closed fist down next to the computer terminal. His movement catches her attention and she snaps, "Seventeen! What did you see?"  
  
"The birth of Ezio Auditore?" responds Desmond, hesitant and trying not to show how Lucy's anger makes him want a hidden blade to protect himself with, makes cold sweat bead on the back of his neck. He doesn't miss the fact that she doesn't call him by his name, even now, still only his subject designation.  
  
But now isn't the time to talk about that one, clearly, not when the blonde beta is ripping something out of the terminal and striding for the main door out of the room. Desmond follows along behind her, obedient and silent, until they're swarmed by guards just as they hit the garage. Lucy is clearly a competent fighter but Desmond had lived under his father's thumb for years, lived on the streets for even longer, comparatively—he goes after the guards with a ruthlessness that he's learned from the Syrian Assassin over months and learned as himself over years because these people stand between him and _freedom_. He shoves knees the wrong direction, destroys shoulder joints, and slams his open palm up into one guard's nose hard enough he shoves the bones into the man's brain.  
  
By the time Desmond stalks up unnoticed behind the two men still harassing the blonde woman and breaks one of their necks with a savage twist, there are eight bodies splayed out over the pavement behind him. Most are moaning, holding knees that will take months to recover, if they ever do, or cradling arms to themselves that don't move right. They're the lucky ones. He lets the guard's body fall with barely a thought, turns to the other one, and it gives Lucy the opportunity to clock him with his own baton.  
  
It's only as he's folding himself into the trunk of a car, seeing changed plans dart through Lucy's chill blue eyes, settling in for the uncomfortable ride to the next location, that he realizes. Neither of his parents had been lying about their lineage, not his mother about Altaïr—still in his head and grousing about how no Assassin should be without a weapon—and not his father, who had always boasted his mother's mother came from _the_ Ezio Auditore. And that baby he'd seen being born, helped _live_ , by the looks of things—  
  
It makes his heart pound more than the escape and the fight combined.  


* * *

  
Sleeping in the trunk of a moving car isn't the worst place he's slept, despite it being cramped, and old habits wake him up when the car finally rolls to a stop. Lucy is quick about coming to the trunk and getting it open, and Desmond doesn't even have it in him to glare because he's _away from Abstergo_. He is gives his surroundings a quick look after he stands, noting the giant warehouse, the green gleam of technological panels at key points through the room, then stretches carefully to his full height for a half a breath before letting his shoulder roll forward again so he makes a less threatening silhouette.  
  
"So, what was that all about?" Desmond asks, painstakingly neutral in tone, as he falls in behind the beta woman on the slow climb up to the wooden doors Desmond can see.  
  
"There was a reason for the escape," says Lucy, and as a non-sequitur, Desmond's heard much better ones after working in a bar. Nobody can change the subject quite like someone down half a bottle of vodka. When Desmond doesn't say anything, Lucy throws him an unreadable look over her shoulder, and finally continues, "Abstergo's going to find another Apple of Eden; the map they got from your ancestor guarantees it.  
  
"What I couldn't tell you is that they're looking for something else, too, a lock for an Apple to open. Warren spent a lot of time, with the last subject, Clay, Subject Sixteen, trying to get a fix on Italy. One of your ancestor's there became very, very important: he found a Vault, and—" There's a long pause as Lucy seems to take in the magnitude of some ancient locked box that could do who knows what, but if it is anything like the Apple, Desmond is afraid of it.  
  
"And we don't want Abstergo to get to that either, if we can help it," Desmond finishes, mostly to himself. He shouldn't be disappointed, but he is: he'd thought he was done with the treasure hunting through his ancestor's memories, only to find out that, while Abstergo wanted him for Altaïr, Lucy now wants him for Ezio.  
  
"Yeah, exactly." Lucy's agreement is a little faint. They take a turn out of the top level of the warehouse into a wide, lavish hallway with expensive looking wood doors, and Desmond wonders about where this building is—and what it looks like from the outside. "If we can find the Vault," continues Lucy, unnoticing of Desmond's distraction, "then I can send others—"  
  
"Others?" Desmond jolts and the word is out of his mouth before he can stop it. She couldn't have meant what he's starting to think she meant with the hand gesture of the old Order's sacrifice. "You mean—"  
  
Lucy flicks a patronizing glare over her shoulder. "I thought you'd figured it out by now, Seven—Desmond: I'm an Assassin, too."  
  
_But I'm not an Assassin_ , Desmond thinks hollowly. And he doesn't miss that she's not giving him a choice in the matter, but then again, why would she? Omegas are meant to _obey_ , so Desmond tucks his chin into his chest, and stays two steps behind Lucy all the way down the hall. He still doesn't know where he is, he doesn't have any resources, and he can't trust that getting out of Lucy's hold won't land him right back with Abstergo. Better to go along, play it safe.  
  
Altaïr is hissing acid Arabic in his head again. They've gone from being the Templar's hostage to an Assassin one.  
  
"As I was saying, once we find the Vault, I can send others to use it or destroy it, if I can, and if we've recovered an Apple we can use." Lucy's cold voice is as dismissive as her actions: she reaches a set of double-wide doors and throws them open immediately, marching into the room like she owns the place. For all Desmond knows, she does.  
  
Desmond pauses at the threshold and takes in the room for a moment before he follows along, stopping only a step inside the door. It's a rather spacious room and the windows are clear and brightly lit. For the first time since his kidnapping, Desmond is seeing real sunlight, which he hadn't seen through Abstergo's white-frosted windows to keep everything on the outside, out. _Freedom is out there_ , and there's a desperation he doesn't want to acknowledge. He shakes his head and turns his attention to the room.  
  
On the left side, a middle-aged man sits at a computer, head tilted in close to read more clearly, and there's a large corkboard behind the computer screen, every inch of it covered with information. The man has glasses sliding down his nose, brown hair that's kept short, and he's dressed like Desmond might imagine a professor would, sweater and slacks and the whole nine yards. He's so deeply engrossed with whatever's on the screen, he hasn't even noticed the doors opening.  
  
Behind the man, there's a strange upraised platform, right underneath the windows, and it has the only bed in the room. Why it's there, Desmond couldn't hope to guess. In front of the platform, two desks sit very close together; the back desk, the one closer to the platform, is empty. The front desk, closer to the door, has a brunette woman perched on a yoga ball, hair cut off around her ears in a ragged bob, who leaps to her feet the moment she sees the blonde beta woman, pulling her headphones off to leave them dangling around her neck.  
  
"Lucy, you made it!" she cries, and it's only as she moves around the edge of the desk, and past the red chair in the center of the room to hug the blonde beta, that Desmond sees how she's dressed and he snorts, quietly, to himself. Zip-vest tracksuit, long sleeve white shirt, red skater shoes, and a red glove on her left hand tells Desmond that this woman was, at some point, an adrenaline junkie who never gave up her dreams of chasing that greatest high. He'd seen lots of the same kind in Bad Weather but it means he might be able to—play to her personality.  
  
Hopefully, he adds with a wince, when Altaïr starts a diatribe that he forcibly ignores. Instead, he turns his attention to the smells of the room, taking a deep breath to catch the scents of the other two betas. They must spend a lot of time in their own parts of the room—and it must be recent because the fragrances are still thin in the air, making their thin beta scents even thinner. But once Desmond has the scents, it's easy to tell that the professor-like man's is dusty, overlaid with a little cologne, and the brunette woman's is comparatively rich, spicy pepper, and something metallic burning, like she spends a lot of time working with a soldering iron.  
  
"God, it's been so long! Twelve years, can you believe it?" continues the brunette beta without pause, and Desmond can't see Lucy's face, given that the other woman still holds the blonde woman's shoulders in her grip, but the brunette grins.  
  
The man finally seems to notice the commotion and he turns his chair to give both of the women a smirk as he uses his knuckle against the edge of his glasses to slide them further up his nose. "Indeed," he says, and his British accent makes him sound even more smug. "Welcome back." Then the man's expression sharpens as he catches sight of Desmond and the limited warmth that had been in the quirk of his mouth vanishes as it takes on a hard edge. "And this must be Subject Seventeen."  
  
Desmond's stomach tightens into a knot, but he responds quietly, "Yeah, I'm Desmond Miles." He'd hoped to be done with the subject number, now that he's out of Abstergo's clutches, so to be met with only that, out of the gate… There's a hope, a faint one, that if he can show his usefulness, they might treat him as part of the team; he keeps it shielded from the part of his brain where Altaïr is now hissing about the disrespect to a fellow Assassin.  
  
The British man sneers at him and his tone goes a little mocking, "Ah, yes. _Mister_ Miles. Where are my manners." The hairs on the back of Desmond's neck raise at the beta's subtle emphasis on Desmond's gendered title, but he can't point to anything in particular about why he doesn't like it, only that he doesn't. The man's eyes flick to Lucy and he immediately smooths his expression into blank civility, then says, "I'm Shaun Hastings—" and gestures with a wave to the brunette woman, now standing next to Lucy with an infectious smile "—this is Rebecca Crane."  
  
"Nice to meet you, Desmond," Rebecca adds brightly. She bounces up onto her toes a little, and Desmond gets the sense that even though she must be close to her mid-thirties, she's a bright and lively person.  
  
It also warms Desmond through that _someone_ in this small group wants to welcome him and he gives Rebecca a small smile of his own and goes to respond to her when the British beta, Shaun, interrupts with, "Now that everyone knows each other, can we get to work, Lucy? Time's precious, as you know." And his parting shot made, he turns back to his computer with an immediate clatter of keys.  
  
Desmond lets his shoulders fold up around his ears, making himself as small as he can, as Lucy fishes out the tech she'd stolen from the Animus with an off-hand comment, "Here, Rebecca. A parting gift from Abstergo."  
  
"Whoa, the memory core!" cries Rebecca, and she reaches for the black box with an excitement that nearly makes her vibrate. "With their data, things should go a lot faster!" She starts to mutter to himself as she trots quickly over to her desk, and the headphones go on as soon as she sits down. If she's that quickly drawn back into her technological project, Desmond is going to have an uphill battle with building any connections he can use to get out of here…  
  
Lucy turns back to Desmond, and with an uptick of her eyebrows at the omega's posture, she gestures over to the red chair, "The new Animus, Animus 2.0; Rebecca designed it. Take a seat." It's a clear dismissal: the blonde beta turns away from him and walks calmly over to the last desk, the one behind Rebecca, and sits down at the computer there. Just to stretch his legs, Desmond meanders the room, gets a drink of water from the kitchen in the last corner of the room, goes up to the platform to look out the window at the strong morning sunlight. But the longer he takes, the more tension he can feel—can see the quick, sharp-eyed looks from Shaun, the tight clench of Lucy's jaw—so he goes to the Animus with an unvoiced sigh after only a few more minutes of relative freedom.  
  
It's far more comfortable than the first Animus and its faux medical table is the first thing he notices. The seat is angled just enough that he's more reclining than upright, and instead of a full screen that covers his entire head, there's only half a panel, and it's easy for Desmond to slip past it as he sits down.  
  
Rebecca, once she comes out of her technologically induced haze long enough to realize the Animus is firing up, makes a few adjustments to the panel, gets him otherwise situated, and then says, "Lucy mentioned that she couldn't see anything the last time you went in. I need more data to see what went wrong so I'm going to start Baby up and let her run for awhile, okay?"  
  
Desmond doesn't even have a chance to respond before a strange feeling consumes him, like there's gold spinning up through his Eagle Vision—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One important note about the conversation between Desmond and Lucy that takes place on September 6, that I can't actually work into the story but is kinda fun to know: I've based all the early dialogue on this guide (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/930022-assassins-creed/faqs/61402) which has been extremely helpful. However! If you go to Abstergo - Day 6 Evening, the conversation that takes place is when the Assassin team tries to break in and gets killed. The conversation for this part of the chapter is from Abstergo - Day 5 Evening, between Desmond and Lucy, but takes place on Day 6, with the addition of the very last bit of dialogue from Abstergo - Day 6 Evening. No Assassins come to help Desmond in this fic while he's in Abstergo.
> 
> Edit: 1/19/2020. Somehow, I lost all my italics. They should all be back.  
> Edit 2: 4/16/2020. Minor edits made.


	2. In which Ezio gains a visitor and the pieces are set

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezio is running around doing his usual Ezio things when something unusual happens.

[Date: July 20, 1476]  
  
Ezio sees the strangely dressed man crouched on the corner of a rooftop behind his ignominious rival Vieri de' Pazzi and nearly trips over his tongue in the middle of his taunt. "Your sister seemed quite satisfied with the 'handling' I gave her earlier," he tells his companions, other young men and a few alpha young women bucking their parents expectations. The others around him chortle, a few whistle, and normally Ezio would revel in the look of aggravation on Vieri's face as his insult processed through the Pazzi's miniscule brain but he can not tear his eyes from the strange man, who nobody else seems to see.   
  
He is not hiding and between his overly clean, white doublet and the blue, textured hose, he sticks out obviously, even with his body held low and close to the edge of the rooftop and the hood on his doublet drawn to hide his face. Besides the odd clothes, white brighter than any shirt Ezio has ever seen, the man himself is strange: even folded over, crouched, Ezio can tell he would be exceptionally tall and skinny, a combination not common in Florence. There is a strange sense about him, too, that makes Ezio think melancholy things in the space between two heartbeats; if Ezio was not certain his Gift absolutely did not come with empathy, the young Auditore would have sworn he is experiencing the longing of a man always on the outside looking in. If Ezio even blinks, he swears he will lose sight of the strange—  
  
The rock takes Ezio by surprise as it snaps across the right side of his face, scoring pain over both his lips. Ezio's hand comes up to the bloody gash without thought, and Vieri's screaming finally filters through his hyperfocus. "Kill him! Kill him!" It has all the added pheromones the young alpha, recently presented, can put out, driving his men into a flurry around him.  
  
"Shit," Ezio mutters to himself, and ducks the sloppy swing of one of Vieri's thugs. Ezio has not quite been surrounded, his own companions close at his back, but they are in a fairly narrow alley and Ezio's attention is thoroughly on the fight around him, lest one of these idiots get in a lucky hit and break his face. More than the rock had, anyway. There is no time, nor the attention truly, for the strange figure.  
  
Two of Vieri's thugs rush him, the one on the left aiming for Ezio's head, the other reaching to grab the Auditore and hold him in place. Ezio charges the reaching bully, shoulder first, and sends the man back a few paces as Ezio slams into him full force, letting the first man's blow slide harmlessly through the air past him. It gives Ezio's friends time to barrel into the second man, literally carrying him down the alley into another part of the fight. The remaining man growls something out but he is only a beta and when Ezio snarls back with the full richness of an alpha, the man flinches and Ezio quickly slams his knuckles into the man's temple. The man drops unconscious without a noise.  
  
"Behind you!" calls an intimately familiar voice, trusted and loved, if sometimes irritating, and Ezio obeys without thought. He spins with his fist outstretched low, and nails one of the thugs in the gut. There is a whine and the man sneaking up on Ezio deflates to the ground as all the air leaves his body and curls up on the flagstones in clear defeat.   
  
The flow of the fight has twisted away from Ezio for the moment and he turns to his brother, grinning. "Federico, what are you doing here?" The day is bright and the brawl has his blood up so Federico is less bothersome than normal, even if it is clear that the Auditore scion has been sent on their father's orders to keep Ezio from finding too much trouble.  
  
Federico teases with a pinch to his cheek, "I wanted to see if baby brother had finally learned how to fight!" Ezio slaps Federico away, scrubbing the back of one hand over his face with a mutinous twist to his aching mouth; he goes to snap at his overbearing sibling when he sees a flash of too-bright cloth and, from the same rooftop Federico must have used to get here, watches the mysterious figure's slim shoulders shake as he laughs. Whatever else Ezio was going to say is lost, and Ezio reaches blindly for Federico, gripping his arm strongly.  
  
"Brother, do you see that person? There, on the roof?" Ezio asks. The figure goes still at the mention, humor gone in a moment, and Ezio can see alarm blatant in every line of his body and on what little of his features he can see under the strange cowl on his doublet. At the lack of his name, Federico straightens, turned serious faster than a blown candle, and though shorter than Ezio by less than a hand's span, he is certainly more powerful and skilled, though the younger alpha is loathe to admit it. If Ezio trusted anyone besides Father to subdue another, it would be Federico.  
  
From the corner of his eye, Ezio sees Federico follow Ezio's single-minded focus, the fight behind them forgotten for now. There is a short pause and then Federico shakes his head, saying, "I see no one on the roof, Ezio. Perhaps this has something to do with your Gift? Should you tell Father?"  
  
Conflicted relief flickers like smoke across the figure's body language and Ezio watches the man clench his hands on the edge of the rooftop between his feet where he still crouches low. Ezio replies without taking his eyes off the figure, doing his best to memorize everything he can, "I do not think this has to do with my Gift; I have not used it all day."

Despite Ezio's claim, Federico seems skeptical—and for good reason. Ezio cannot remember a time before he could blink and see colors across nearly every person and he recalls clearly the frustration of those early years of his childhood where his family had not understood what it was he was talking about, what he had not the language to convey until he was almost eight. That early disconnect regarding his Gift left its mark, though, and Ezio knows Federico, at least, assumes nearly everything odd happening with the younger alpha is due to the skill.

The figure cocks his head at Ezio's statement, interested but still strung tight, ready to flee at the first sign Ezio may move his direction. Ezio tries to make his own body language inviting, nonthreatening, while he considers Federico's second question for only a moment.  
  
With a shake of his head, he finally says, "No, Father has enough on his mind already. Petruccio is getting sick again, not to mention the Pazzis. Think nothing more of it." Ezio tries to catch the eyes of the figure, to convey his curiosity and nothing else, and smiles victoriously when the figure relaxes minutely. Ezio does not know why it matters so much to him that this mysterious person be lifted from his troubles, especially if he is only a hallucination as Ezio is beginning to suspect he might be, but the sense he awakens with his Gift says this man is important and it has yet to fail him.

There is a swelling cry from down the alley and the young alpha at last remembers his tussle with his rival, smile widening into a smirk. "Back into the thick of things I go, Federico!"  
  
Federico tries to grab him, saying something plaintively that Ezio ignores, while Ezio turns neatly on his heel with a wave to both his brother and the strange figure still on the rooftop. The figure laughs at him again, the lingering sorrow surrounding him lifting long enough for the slim man to raise his left hand from its place and wiggle his fingers back in a sort-of wave. It is an odd gesture, more suited to a woman, but Ezio takes it for what it is and, grinning, swans his way through his companions until he can kick Vieri in the back of the knee, sending the younger alpha tumbling forward and away.  
  
The rest of the fight is swift, only a few more exchanged blows, until Vieri calls his men to him and flees like the coward he is. Ezio is normally good at rising above the alpha instincts that surfaced on his sixteenth name-day but seeing the Pazzi flee is more than he can take. With a low growl, vision washing red with a sense of alpha, instinct rides him and the young alpha coils himself to lunge after his fleeing rival, baring his teeth ferally.   
  
He yelps when another alpha, older and familiar, smelling of family, of wine and bread and faintly of steel, all undercut with a current of frustration-irritation-affection, seizes him by the scruff and he swings around in a tight circle from the momentum of his lunge. It is not a scent that spurs a fight—nothing more than a wriggle, the desire to be loose and hunting given form—and the younger alpha growls playfully at this older one, until he begins to understand the grumbled litany in his ear.  
  
"Little brother, shut up. You're making a fool of yourself. Come, let's steal some coin and find a doctor to see to your face, since I'm sure you wasted all of yours on wine. Clearly you won't keep Cristina with your brains, or your control, so we'll have to protect your beauty. It's the only thing going for you, now."  
  
Ezio goes slack, letting Federico take the full weight of him with a grunt, as the playfulness of his instincts finally subsides and all he can feel is the flush of embarrassment. "My coin was not wasted, Federico, and not all of us can be built like brick houses." It is a weak jibe and Ezio knows it but it is the best he has. Federico is twenty to his seventeen and only slightly broader across the chest than Ezio is, neither of them as wide in the shoulder as their father. Federico cuffs the back of Ezio's head as he lets go and, without a word, the Auditore brothers go to a few of the unconscious or insensate Pazzi men littered across the alley to nip coins from their pockets, enough to cover the doctor's fee without being enough to truly be missed.  
  
Done and heading to the nearest square, Ezio looks again to the rooftops and is surprised, pleasantly so, to see the figure keeping pace with them. He does not move like the Auditores do—unfortunately, they are rather flashy, with leaps that help them cross the rooftops quickly, though noticeably. Instead, he stays crouched over, using his hands as if they are a second set of legs, bracing them on the small chimneys in the middle of the rooftops so he can swing his whole body over the chimney without his feet touching the ground again. It makes his motions unfalteringly smooth, no matter the level of the roofs he traverses, and when he falls from a distance that requires a roll, he seems to roll early and somehow it makes almost no noise.  
  
The man's capability makes Ezio want desperately to learn those tricks. Compared to that, he and Federico must look like baby birds, only just beginning to feather and ungainly with it, compared to the sparrow-like swiftness of this strange man. Federico watches where Ezio does, as they travel through the familiar streets of Florence, but it is only too clear he cannot see the figure, despite tracking Ezio's gaze unfalteringly. If not for the noise the man made as he rolls or the soft grunts as he climbs the lattice work, Ezio might have feared he was being haunted by a ghost, but certainly no ghost would make noise or have to clamber gracefully over the side of a building.   
  
Somehow, Ezio is also certain that even if this figure was visible to the rooftop guards, they would look right past the man.  
  
The doctor, one of the better ones in the area who knows Ezio and Federico well, presses something foul to the cut across Ezio's mouth and Ezio hisses as it stings. 

Almost below his hearing, Ezio catches a hum and then, "It's gonna scar." It is a low, soothing voice, mellow, Ezio might have called it, with a strange accented cadence. The doctor's firm hold keeps the young alpha from trying to find the speaker as that soft tone thrums something through him. Once the doctor has finally finished and Ezio looks around the square in the falling evening light, he sees neither the speaker nor the strange figure and bites his tongue.  
  
There is no reason to be disappointed, Ezio thinks to himself sternly, especially when the speaker probably was the mysterious man. Normally, a fight with Vieri would leave Ezio in a good mood for hours. Federico has always been sensitive to his brother and asks, "what is it?" His voice is pitched to carry to Ezio and no farther as they swagger around the corner of the square into an alley, purposefully forgettable, as young nobles often are in this area.  
  
"The person you could not see, brother, he has vanished," explains Ezio, and Federico's expression pulls, eyebrows pinning together. This is their part of Florence, pissing contest with Vieri aside, and neither of the Auditore brothers like an unknown about, except that Ezio wants questions answered more than he wants to run the man out of town like they normally would. Why could only Ezio see him? Why did Ezio get the sense that he was sad that first moment? Where did he come from, that his clothes could be so white and so blue?  
  
When Ezio says nothing more, though, Federico shakes his head. "We should head home, then. Father's sure to be wondering where we've gone."  
  
Ezio's mouth twists, and the cut there twinges as he mutters, "Yes, and I would also rather avoid a lecture." For all that Federico plays the dutiful son sometimes, he does not seem especially hurried to be playing the role now, grinning and gesturing to the rooftops above them.  
  
"Up for a little race, then?" he taunts. Racing over the rooftops is always a fun pastime, and their races have only become more competitive as Ezio gets older and grows into the long limbs God gave him. Federico picks their mark as he usually does—the steeple of a nearby church—and also cheats, taking off on the count of two, instead of three as he is supposed to. Ezio growls, low in his throat, and follows his older brother up the side of the wall, leaping as high as he can to grip the edge of the roof in his hands and hauling himself up. Federico is already a few steps away, and gaining more ground quickly, when Ezio sees his opportunity.  
  
There, in the middle of the flat section of roofs, is a chimney block. Federico skirts around it, but it slows him and Ezio takes the opportunity. With a deep breath, Ezio tries the movement he watched the mysterious figure use: he plants both hands on the chimney and lifts, swinging his legs up through the gap in his braced arms. It launches him past his brother when he manages it a second time, on another chimney close to the wall of the church, and Ezio crows, "I almost feel bad about this! No shame in failure, brother!" Behind him now, Federico curses and puts on a burst of speed and Ezio laughs as he reaches the church roof first.  
  
They dart up the steeple, as high as they can climb, and Ezio focuses his attention on his Gift, activating it and looking about. His brother lights up a pale silver, the same color as all their family, the exact shade of the matemark on Mother's neck, and off in the distance he can see a silver dome that marks the roof of their own palazzo. The few people still out as night settles are all white, with a few blue figures on the corner of two streets, prostitutes fishing for customers by the look of things.  
  
But no mysterious figure.  
  
Federico sighs and sits on the edge of the church roof, and then says quietly, almost contemplatively, "It is a good life we lead, brother."   
  
Truthfully, Ezio thinks, it is, as he lets his Gift fade. Many of his companions, first- or second-born sons to couples the Church calls Godlike, complain endlessly of their younger siblings, or of their parents' high expectations, the struggles of their finding apprenticeships; life would not seem very exciting, were Ezio to live it how they did.   
  
Being a second-born son to an alpha-omega couple seems the height of luxury, in comparison—though the Church frowns on such matings, calling them the work of the Devil to fall so deeply to instinct. The silver haze that surrounds their home can only be the result of the strong bond between his parents, who were a love match from the start and now, four children later, are still as in love as they were the day they mated.   
  
"The best," Ezio finally agrees, leaning against the steeple's base, arms crossed over his chest. "May it never change."  
  
"And may it never change us," finishes Federico.  
  
From the corner of his eye, Ezio catches a flash of too-white, there and gone too fast to truly see, and grins as he follows behind Federico when he stands and begins the trek home. Ezio amends his comment, silently: he does hope his life changes, just a little at least. He has always been helpless to mysteries and this new man presents many of them. Too many for Ezio to resist, the temptation even enough to keep him from straying to visit the beautiful beta Cristina Vespucci. Instead, he spends a long night on the roof of the Palazzo, staring at the stars and waiting for the figure to join him.   
  
He never does.  
  
Days—weeks—later, after Ezio has willingly sent himself on every errand he can get from his siblings and his parents—even errands for Federico which Ezio normally avoided like he did propriety, which was to say, with everything the young alpha had—Ezio has still not gotten as good a look at the strange man as he had that first day. There is a strong sense that Ezio is being followed and it makes him twitchy beyond anything he had ever suffered, the feeling of eyes on his back a constant that he never learns to ignore. And although Ezio had seen flashes of color around corners or over the rooftops and has made quick chase, Ezio can never catch the man.  
  
And the figure was right, if it was the man who made the strange comment: the cut across his mouth did scar.  
  
Carrying boxes for Mother's new artistic protégé, Ezio grinds his teeth and grumbles to himself that this would all be much easier if his apparition did not project his emotions so strongly that Ezio can almost feel them as if they were his own: that first day was melancholic, interactions with Ezio's family brought forth wistful longing, and now the meeting of Leonardo da Vinci drowns him in shock and awe.  
  
Leonardo da Vinci is certainly a talented fellow, only a handful years older than Ezio but already well established in Florence, enough to have his own workshop and clearly enough patronage to afford a stylish wardrobe, which is nearly an advertisement in and of itself. But Ezio cannot figure out what would make his apparition think so highly of a young alpha artist like this one, for the strength of the figure's awe is nearly veneration. He chews over the feelings as much as he can, listening with one ear to Mother and Leonardo's conversation, Leonardo learning that Ezio is following in his father's footsteps as a banker, that Leonardo wishes to do more with his work than simply create pretty things. It raises Ezio's estimation of the young man, warming him from wary confusion to tentative friendship.  
  
The next day, Father summons Ezio to his office, late in the afternoon, after Petruccio had begged Ezio run about collecting bird feathers, of all things, and then refused to tell him what he wanted them for, the silly, loveable boy. He's still brushing other feathers off his shoulders with a wide grin when he knocks on the door to Father's office. Ezio rarely spends time with his father in his office, always in the Palazzo courtyard or at the dinner table, so he cannot help but look around curiously.   
  
Father is bent over his desk, quill poised in his hand over the thick ledgers the bank keeps and which must be returned soon after Father has finished his review. There are several bookcases, heavy with copies of the ledgers as well as tomes of all other kinds; Ezio sees titles on religion, history, treatises on economy. Mother enjoys the visual of art while Father has always been more well-read, Ezio thinks, and love swells inside him for his parents. Somewhere outside, his apparition's emotions surge too, though these are far less happy than his own, acute loneliness at the forefront, and Ezio forces himself not to think of all the things Ezio would offer the figure, if only he could, things like his elder brother's jovial company, his sister's expressive storytelling, Petruccio's quiet humming.   
  
His father looks up at the soft sound of Ezio's boots on the floorboards and his tense expression loosens into a warm smile. "Ezio! Come in, son, I have a few things for you to run," and Father turns from the ledgers to the fireplace behind his desk, carefully picking up two letters from the mantlepiece. "Here, I need these delivered to associates of mine, a prostitute keeping an eye on the Pazzi household and a mercenary watching their men."  
  
Ezio takes the letters and hides them inside his doublet, where his freerunning is least likely to see them fall from his body, and asks, "Where can I find your associates, Father?"  
  
Sliding a map from the corner of the desk, Father points out two intersections, close together, and also a short distance from the Palazzo Pazzi. He would have to be careful not to run into his rival or his rival's minions on his father's business, lest his work be interrupted. Lastly, his father points to a rooftop just visible from the window and adds, "And I'm told there's a letter waiting for me at a coop, would you fetch it?"  
  
"Of course, Father, as quick as my legs can carry me," assures Ezio.  
  
Father reaches across the desk to clasp Ezio's shoulder briefly and then nods towards the door. "Come here when you've finished. There are some things we need to discuss. And I don't think I need to tell you to be careful, my son?"  
  
With a shake of his head and a rueful smile, Ezio replies, "Not this time, no." Completing chores such as these—delivering letters, taking documents, ferrying small bags of coin from one bank to another—have been among Ezio's duties since he was old enough to scale the rooftops with Father and Federico to help him. The deliveries go smoothly, though the mercenary makes a vaguely threatening statement that sets Ezio's teeth on edge but flees before Ezio can convince him to explain and sudden anxiety spikes through his apparition. How the man could hear them when Ezio could not see him was a mystery for another day, though Ezio is careful to only set the mental consideration aside to come back to later.  
  
After collecting the small roll of paper from the pigeon coop, Ezio turns for home; he could take the long, slow way, the coop tucked into the corner of a particularly tricky cross of overhang and building, the building itself far from its fellows, forcing someone to use a ladder instead of going from rooftop to rooftop. Ezio, however, has been moving smoothly all day, and every day before, his jumps more powerful, his steps more sure. He takes a moment to measure the distance between the buildings and then rushes as quickly as he can for the edge and leaps, aiming across the wide street below, as close to the building with the coop as possible.   
  
His breath catches in his chest and time slows to a crawl: he misjudged. There was not enough power when he took off, not quite, and Ezio begins the minute movements that should allow him to roll backwards as he hits the ground to keep from breaking his legs, he hopes. Less than an arm's length from the edge of the rooftop, slim hands catch his forearms and tug.   
  
The grab is sure and Ezio finds his own hands suddenly wrapped around wiry forearms, feet planting against the building as he is reeled in like a fish on a line. When he makes the rooftop, he rolls away from the edge with a stuttering sigh. "Thank you, my friend, that would have been a painful fall—"  
  
"Oh, shit," says a voice, with its recognizably strange accent, very quietly.  
  
"You!" Ezio springs to his feet and around, and sees his apparition in front of him.   
  
For the first time, the apparition is not wearing the strange hood on his doublet, and Ezio is struck by how beautiful the man is, despite the panic twisting his long, narrow features and nearly glowing in his amber eyes. This whipcrack of a man, even skinnier than Ezio first thought and a handspan taller than Ezio himself—already taller than most—has the sort of face an artist might try to render in sculpture for a young god. Ezio feels his mouth part open slightly but cannot do anything to stop it. Unconsciously, he memorizes the shape of the man's nose, the shortly shorn hair of dark brown, the bow of his lips; his skin of a shade to Ezio's own, or darker even, underneath the paleness brought on by his alarm.  
  
Then he realizes that the man is turning swiftly, and surging into a long legged sprint. "Wait!" cries Ezio, beginning a pursuit, and damn how it may look to any of the rooftop guards.  
  
"Please, friend!" The figure, leading Ezio past but not truly near the Palazzo, pauses between steps, just for a moment, a hesitation only one as sharp eyed as Ezio might have seen. "I mean you no harm! I only want to ask you some questions!" Ezio curses when the figure manages to turn the corner around a tall rooftop before Ezio can get there. "No, wait!" he shouts, but by the time he turns the corner, the figure has vanished like smoke.  
  
And as Ezio searches around the rooftops pointlessly, he hears a ringing in his head, a tolling bell, a sound that sets off true panic and sends Ezio's thoughts scattering like so much wheat, something instinctive calling him home. He follows it with desperation boiling acid in his blood, pacing the yelling soldiers he sees on the level of the streets, pushing himself over the roofs as fast as he can, his apparition forgotten. Something has happened to his home, and God will reach down and damn him before he lets anything happen to his family.


	3. In which the Animus isn't working right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desmond is pulled from the Animus to find that whatever was going wrong with it during the escape from Abstergo is still occurring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is much shorter than the first Desmond chapter, but there's a fair amount of plot implicated here. 
> 
> Again, this is unbeta'd so if you see something wrong, related to grammar, spelling, or anything obvious like that, please let me know.
> 
> Enjoy!

[September 8, 2012]

There's a pressure behind his eyes—not quite a headache, not yet, but the start of one—and his hand reaches for his forehead reflexively at a spike in the pressure. He felt fine just a few minutes ago, sprinting away from Ezio after saving the young alpha from breaking his legs, but the rapid desynch—

"Ah, Seventeen, can you hear me?" Cool, chill tone. _English_. It takes him a second to parse, after spending weeks using Italian exclusively. The language is nearly nostalgic, makes him miss New York and it's underbelly, the people nobody wanted to see, and the tiny Italian café he'd worked at for nearly two years. Good people, the Morettis, more tolerant towards a homeless omega teenager than most.

Altaïr hisses Arabic in the back of his head but the Syrian beta, powerful Assassin though he may be, is almost too simple to ignore when there's so much else crowding around in his brain. The sights and sounds of Florence. The powerful Auditore family scentmarkers around their palazzo, so strong there's nearly a phantom of the smell lingering.

The remembered look of Ezio's eyes gone wide with shock.

"Sevent—Mr. Miles?" That voice again, but a little more testy, a little more impatient. He doesn't want to try and open his eyes yet, not if it means a full blown headache, but he has to answer. Encouraging the use of his name, even if it's his last name, is worth all the painful headaches the Animus might cause.

"Yeah?" He groans.

The scent of floral perfume, underlined with rotten copper, replaces the phantom impression of the Auditore family's. It's a scent he's familiar with and he can see, in his mind, the beta the thin scent belongs to: blonde hair, strict behavior, flat expression. "Were you in any memories?"

That's right, they're only memories. They don't _feel_ like memories though, nothing at all like Altaïr's, where it was like a movie but also more—nothing he did changed the outcome, but he saw as the Syrian Assassin had, heard what he heard, thought as he'd thought. But if the beta says they're memories, that's what they are. "Yeah," he finally says, "yeah, there were memories." The pressure in his head begins to subside and Desmond cracks his eyes open, sees the panel and its bright lights and shifts just enough that he can focus past them.

Lucy paces back and forth in front of the Animus' chair, with one hand at her mouth in a thoughtful gesture and the other under her upraised elbow. "What sort of memories were they?" she finally asks, sparing him barely a glance. Behind her, Shaun sits at his computer, and though he's still facing it, it seems like most of his attention is on them. The angle of the Animus keeps Desmond from seeing Rebecca's desk but he can guess she's paying close attention, too.

"They seemed pretty normal?" Desmond hedges.

The description catches Lucy's interest. She stops pacing to turn and face him and the blue of her eyes is sharp enough to cut. "Normal?" she echoes.

"Yeah," says Desmond again, "normal. Ezio got into a fistfight with his rival—um, Vieri de' Pazzi, I think?" He can see again how heartfelt and sincere the young alpha had been, the sharpness of yellow eyes gone deliberately soft, trying to make Desmond feel more—more _welcome_ , he guesses. Considering the inhospitable reception into this group, the fact that he even tried makes Desmond fond of him, fonder than he is of Lucy or Shaun, and maybe even Rebecca. Makes him miss the alpha's scent, full and heavy with pheromones, surprisingly sweet and soft.

From his desk, Shaun makes an 'a-ha' sort of sound to himself, and Desmond hears the rapid clatter of keys. "The Pazzi family was the other major banking family of Florence in the 1470s and 1480s," the British beta reports and his accent butchers the Italian family name. Desmond winces to hear it. "They apparently tried a coup d'état against the Medici that didn't end well and reports estimate eighty people were killed over the six months after the attempt."

"This kid couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag," Desmond grumbles to himself, and if the rest of the family was as cowardly as the young alpha scion, the omega wonders how the Pazzi got the balls to try and overthrow the Medici family in the first place. It hadn't really stood out to him in the Animus—not after knowing the Auditores were friendly with _Leonardo da Vinci_ of all people—but he does recall that Ezio had run some documents to the Medici household on his father's behalf, had respectfully delivered the pages to a steward for Lorenzo de Medici. He doesn't really know what to do with that fact, or the Leonardo da Vinci fact, or much of anything really.

If Desmond is being honest, and he tries to be with himself at least, if not anyone else, the best he's going to be doing right now is hanging on for the ride.

Lucy hums, looks past Desmond to Rebecca's desk, and Rebecca says, "That does sound like it could match up with the brief part of the memory we saw."

"What could be causing this?" the blonde beta asks, turning to pace again in short strides that make Desmond immediately anxious, feeling an uptick in his heartbeat, and he smooths his palms across his thighs to wipe away the wetness growing there.

And then it dawns on him what Lucy and Rebecca are talking about: the others can't see the memories. They don't know that Desmond is appearing in them, instead of seeing them through Ezio's eyes, like how he'd seen Altaïr's memories as the Syrian beta had experienced them. Desmond's breath catches in his throat because there's a decision to be made—he just doesn't know which way to fall. He hasn't missed, either, that nobody besides Lucy has so much as looked at him, and he lets himself go still and quiet in a way he'd learned from childhood and in the streets and as Altaïr.

"Well," Rebecca starts, long and drawn out, the sort of sound Desmond heard a lot when someone had to respond that they'd heard him ask what they wanted but weren't ready to actually order yet. There's the sound of tapping keys, and then the woman continues, "Lucy, the problem is that Ezio's original DNA is corrupted, at least partially. And then there's the psychological component of the Animus to consider."

"What do you mean corrupted?" Lucy's voice is sharp and Desmond stills a flinch at the sound of it.

"You know how the DNA has to encode properly for us to be able to access it? And how Abstergo was starting to wonder if gene modification was going to affect encoded memories?" asks the brunette beta over the sounds of her keyboard. "There was an internal publishing to the Abstergo higher-ups or something."

"Yes," Lucy replies, testily, "I wrote the article."

"Oh, yeah," and there's a tense laugh from the other woman.

The blonde blows out a breath, quietly, and as she paces away from Rebecca, Desmond can clearly see how hard she rolls her eyes. "And?" prods Lucy. "You can't think Mr. Miles here was genetically modified."

"No! No, nothing like that," and Rebecca hurries to explain, "but I conjectured that if gene modification could corrupt memories, then there might be other things, illnesses even, like the measles, that could do the same. And if you consider what happens if a link in the chain got a disease that affected the encoded memories…"

Desmond wishes fiercely, and not for the first time, that he'd had more time to study what _normal_ kids learned in school after running away from the Farm, but Lucy seems to pick up what it is Rebecca is saying where Desmond can't and nods, musing almost to herself, "Of course. Enough to access the memories, not enough to display them. And the psychological component, of course, that too."

Rebecca makes a satisfied little hum now that Lucy understands what it is that's causing the failure in the Animus and goes quiet.

Lucy still paces, though more slowly, and Desmond tries his hardest to make himself as unnoticeable as possible while he thinks furiously.

If they can't see the memories, how much could he keep to himself? How much bargaining power would he need to get a one-way ticket out of here, once the Assassins had found the Apple?

Before he has the time to weigh every option, determine the best course, Lucy turns to him. "Seventeen, we'll have to debrief after every session then. What did Ezio know about the Pieces of Eden?"

Desmond's response is immediate, tipping out of his mouth without thought at the commanding tone the blonde beta had used. "Nothing."

Shaun snorts from his computer, turns a derisive gaze on the omega, and says accusingly, "You think the greatest mentor of the Assassin Order who ever lived doesn't know anything about the Pieces of Eden? Are you always this useless or are you better on your ba—?"

"Shaun!" Rebecca shrieks, scandalized.

The British beta rolls his eyes as obviously as he can, snorts again as if to emphasize how above this he is, and spins his chair back around to clatter his keyboard loudly.

Inside Desmond's head, the Syrian Assassin starts up again, hissing with fury and rage, and Desmond wraps his hands around the fronts of his knees and _grips_. That sort of comment isn't the first that he's heard—not by far, not even the worst—but he thought he might be among allies. All it does is summon up old wants, old aches, old fears, and Desmond forces himself not to long for the uncomplicated cat and mouse relationship he has with Ezio.

"What do you mean, Seventeen?" asks Lucy, and Desmond didn't even realize he'd been staring at his toes until his head snaps up to look her in the eye. "How can Ezio Auditore not know about the Pieces of Eden?" There's a quirk in her brow, a subtle condescension to her tone that flattens the omega inside himself and he lets his beta ancestor filter up through him.

"I don't think Ezio even knows about the Assassins," a strange mix of Desmond and Altaïr explains, releasing his grip to spread his hands in a useless little gesture with a shrug. If Lucy sees the flex of Desmond's left wrist, an unconscious motion of Altaïr's to trigger his hidden blade, her expression doesn't change. "He's a seventeen year old kid right now, more worried about the beta girl he likes and having a fun time. Altaïr wasn't much different, really, though his concerns were training and showing off for Kadar or Malik or Al Mualim, depending on who was around."

Lucy's hand raises back up to her mouth as she considers again, turning and pacing slowly, and it's a long, tense, near silent moment before, "You were in the Animus for only half an hour, how much time did you get through?"

"A few weeks, but not more than a month." Desmond glances at Shaun's tense back, how hard his fingers bounce off the keys of his keyboard, can almost hear Rebecca and her curiosity.

"Do you feel like you could go back in?" And despite the uptick in her voice at the end that formally makes it a question, there's something in the quick glance out of the corner of her eye that tells the omega it very much isn't a request.

The sad part is: Desmond doesn't even mind. Running around pre-Renaissance Florence, trying to hide from the far too-sharp eyes of the young Auditore alpha, the sense of danger and betrayal lingering in Desmond's lungs… There's little hope he can change anything that happens, but if he can help somehow, he wants to try. He leans back into the cradle of the Animus chair without comment and lets that sensation of gold spin up through his mind with an eagerness he doesn't want to acknowledge.


	4. In which plot actually appears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been really excited to post this chapter, especially after all the heartwarming and splendid comments from everyone. Seriously, you're all far too nice to me. I will say that, in a lot of ways, this is a straight rehash of Assassin's Creed II, with some bonus characterization and Desmond. Unfortunately, if that's disappointing to anyone, you've probably got... two? more chapters before I really break away from canon.
> 
> Again, as the chapter is unbeta'd by anyone but myself, if you see any straight grammatical errors (word placement, verb tense, that sort of stuff) please let me know.
> 
> Otherwise, I'll metaphorically get out of your way: enjoy!

[Date: August 9, 1476]

By the time he reaches the Palazzo, Ezio is sweating hard and the alarm that had driven him across the rooftops has lessened not at all. The soldiers had eventually fallen behind, taking up post on the street corners leading to the Palazzo, but he spared them no attention. Even before he makes the final drop into the courtyard, he can tell something is terribly, horrendously wrong but even looking about with his Gift reveals nothing that might cause his worry.

"Father?" he shouts, throwing the front door open quickly. "Mother? Federico?" The front hall is a mess, and Ezio stares around, gaping, at the plants in their pots strewn across the floor when his instincts shriek at him. He ducks before he realizes, the vase in Annetta's hand skimming the top of his head before she realizes who she is attacking.

"Ser Ezio, thank God!" she cries, clutching the vase to her chest. Her simple grey dress is askew and her hair is hanging around her face instead of in its tight coil like it usually is. Annetta has seen a lot, as only an unmarried omega of her age could have, and it frightens Ezio more—on top of her general disarray—that she has clearly been crying, tears still glistening on her cheeks.

"Annetta, what happened?" asks Ezio, trying for calm, trying to slow his breathing and think through the panic settling in his chest, press down the instincts rising up, instincts that scream at him about home and family and threat to those who are his. It does not help that Annetta's scent, always light and sweet, comforting but not appealing, is now sour with her own fear and it spurs on his instincts more than he would have ever believed. He shakes his head but it barely drags him out of his haze and he clasps her shoulders as a grounding point. "Where is everyone?"

"Gone, Ser!" Annetta says through a fresh wave of tears. "They came and took your father and brothers to the Palazzo della Signoria—to prison!"

Horror washes through Ezio, a tingling that starts in the back of his throat and spreads down his spine as if he has been struck by lightning until it settles low in his stomach—he fears he might be sick for a long moment. It is far too strong to only be his own, though, and he is barely able to separate out his feelings from his apparition's. His horror, tinged with fury, is in his throat, his alpha instincts at the fore. Even though it would do nothing, he has the strongest urge to bite, so powerful his whole mouth throbs with it. By contrast, the horror in his stomach is his apparition's, a cold apprehension that he's never felt before that sits low and causes his nausea.

"And my mother?" Ezio asks, breathlessly, barely a whisper, and yet somehow he unhinges his clenching jaw so the words are not a hiss from between his teeth. "My sister?"

From the door that leads to the sitting room, Ezio hears, faintly, the call of his name and, letting go of Annetta, he moves quickly towards the sound of it. Claudia is sobbing as she hurries from the sitting room, holding her skirts up until she can fling herself against Ezio, who cradles his beta sister in a hug as he tries to soothe her. "Claudia, are you alright?" For all that Claudia had been more concerned with Duccio and his wooing than anything going on in their family for weeks now, she is his only sister and Ezio loves her, would never want to see her hurt.

"Y-yes," she hiccups at last, and Ezio sighs with relief when he pushes her back a step to confirm for himself, only to drag her immediately back into another hug: with his instincts surging, he cannot bear to have her further than an arm's length from him. Claudia swallows, loudly, and then whispers, "But Mother…"

Ezio looks to the sitting room and sees Mother there, looking lost and blank, resting her weight against the doorframe as if she were drunk, though it is clear drunkenness is not the cause of her bizarre behavior. Then he sees the pale bruising starting to form around one of Mother's wrists and understands. Mother has always been fiercely defensive of their family in her own way, but to have their house invaded by the city guards, she probably fought back—if not to protect Father or Federico, then certainly to protect Petruccio. 

"Mother," Ezio breathes and his heart aches, to see his vibrant Mother reduced to this. There's a soft sound of surprise from behind him and when Ezio glances over his shoulder, past Claudia, his apparition is standing against the wall next to the open front door, his strange hood lowered, and his expression a grimace of pained sympathy. The young alpha could not say when the strange man entered the palazzo, nor why he lingers next to the open doorway. Yet his features are familiar, now that Ezio is seeing them a second time and that familiarity soothes some of Ezio's surging instincts. But he has little time to think about any of that, not when he has a plan growing in in his mind, so he shakes his head.

"It is not safe here," announces Ezio, knowing only how easy it would be to take advantage of his fifteen year old sister, omega mother, or distraught maid, in their current states. "Annetta," he says, dragging her attention up from the vase she still clutches to her, "is there a place you can take them?"

The words take a moment to penetrate Annetta's mind and then she is nodding, almost frantic. "Yes. Yes! To my sister's!" All their family knew of Paola, Annetta's older beta sister, and though he thinks as quickly as he can, Ezio cannot think of anyone he could trust with his family. Paola's would have to do.

Claudia looks at him, desperate for guidance, and Ezio manages, "Do so, please, Annetta. I will go see my father. He will know what to do." He kisses his sister amongst her dark curls, lets his fingers skim across the family scent mark on her cheek, and then nudges her out from his arms to Annetta, who at last sets the vase aside to take the young beta by the hand. With a clear goal in mind, Ezio can see Annetta drawing herself together from the frightened omega she had been back into the capable housekeeper who had firmly scolded Federico and Ezio for so much of their troublemaking.

Before Annetta leaves with Claudia and Mother down the hall to the kitchen, and the back door waiting there, she warns, "Be careful, Messer Ezio! The guards were looking for you as well!" Then they go, vanishing out into the late evening.

There is a soft sound behind him, and, as Ezio turns to his apparition, the man steps away from the wall, weight on the balls of his feet and hands casually available, even though the only person who can see him is Ezio. The sense of the man's emotions has dimmed, leaving Ezio swimming in only his own rage and confusion and the man's apparent readiness for violence spurs a snarl from low in Ezio's chest until it spills out into desperate words. 

"What is happening? Why would the guards take my family like this? Federico? Even Petruccio?" His teeth snap together savagely, as much as he can give into instinct without losing himself to it completely, and he forces himself to fold his arms across his chest so he does not begin pacing or start a fight with the strange man. "Petruccio is barely eleven, and too sickly to be out of bed for long!"

The apparition stands silently and almost still, his only motion his hands opening and closing at his sides, his shoulders curling inwards a touch. He does not react to Ezio otherwise, watching him with eyes that glint amber in the low light near sunset. "But I cannot answer those questions until I have spoken to Father," Ezio says, mostly to himself through the white-hot fury still surging, and then he pins his attention on the strange man who has avoided and yet followed him for weeks now. He cannot help the growl that underlines each word, nor the finger he points accusingly at the man. "I want answers from you, though. Who are you? Why are you following me?"

Despite the aggressive tone, the apparition only dips his head, both hands up in a peaceful and placating gesture, murmuring In his unusual accent, "There isn't time. You should go to the prison and free your family." Ghostly as he is, the apparition leaves no scent for Ezio to determine his presentation but his behavior makes at least one thing clear: this man is not an alpha. 

Ezio has never held to the notions being bandied about by the Church—notions that all alphas are at the mercy of the instincts inside them driving them to mate, and mark, and rut—but near every alpha he knows struggles to keep this calm and demure in the face of another angry alpha. Even though the apparition is correct, Ezio very much should go to the Palazzo della Signoria, the paranoia of having an invisible figure following him around makes him want answers.

"No, I have felt your presence for weeks at my heels," snarls Ezio and then he repeats his demand. "Who are you and why are you following me?" There is no rhyme or reason as to why the apparition has appeared now, not when he had so effectively stayed hidden through all of Ezio's best efforts, but Ezio will not let this opportunity slip by.

The corners of the man's mouth turn down while he thinks, and Ezio activates his Gift once the man is distracted, another thing he had wanted to do. Unlike his family, who are all the same gleaming silver of his mother's matemark, or the malevolent crimson of Vieri, or even Annetta's glittering blue, this man is a wash of pale gold, the same shade as all the interesting little nooks he had found scattered around the city. 

If there was any other proof Ezio needed that there is something alarmingly different about this man, besides his fascinatingly strange clothes, he has it now—while every other person had a solidness to the color that disguised all other features, the apparition has only a pale translucence covering him, illuminating the man's attractive face. He wonders what it might mean.

At last, the man says, weighing each word as if it might bite him, "After—after we save your family, okay? I'll answer anything you want, only after." He looks as if he wants to run and the man inside Ezio, the person beyond the alpha instincts still clamoring, wants to reassure him badly but—

Ezio cannot help the shake of his head, the threatening step he takes towards his apparition; the man's shoulders tighten and his fists stay closed, arms dangerously loose at his sides, and Ezio uses all his shaky willpower to force himself to take a steadying breath, to keep his feet anchored to the floor so he does not step forward again. "Your name, then. If you swear to answer all my questions."

There is another long pause and Ezio, at his wit's end, nearly loses his patience before the man whispers, "Desmond." There is a strange pouch at the front of Desmond's doublet and the apparition hides his hands there with a bizarre cast to his expression, bottom lip between his teeth. It is the same sort of look that Petruccio would get when he had been out of bed and knew he should not be, guilty and uncomfortable.

"Do you not have a family name?" inquires Ezio further, as gently as he can now that he is getting the answers he seeks. Somewhere under his breast, he knows he probably should not be trusting a stranger so easily—especially not one that it appears Ezio alone can see—but the man seems so genuine and sincere that Ezio feels no fear in making the decision to trust the apparition.

"Miles," Desmond sighs at last. "Desmond Miles." The man ducks his head as far down as he can get it but even that does not disguise the embarrassed splash of red alighting on the sharpness of his cheekbones. Both the man's name and his family name are strange, Ezio thinks, not something he has ever heard around Florence. Desmond's reaction also says that he is ashamed of his family name, given he did not offer it immediately, and Ezio guesses there is more there that he should know about but now is not the time to ask.

"Messer Miles—" Ezio begins hesitantly and pauses reflexively when Desmond nearly flinches, a motion only the sharpest eyes might catch.

"Just Desmond, please." 

The look in the apparition's amber eyes is compelling, a plea that does not make it into Desmond's tone, and Ezio finds himself agreeing without a second thought. "Desmond," he tries again, and at the man's firm nod, the nearly unnoticeable loosening of his tense shoulders, continues, "I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze, but somehow I think you already knew that." Desmond nods again at Ezio's glance, looking even guiltier. "If you are going to help me discover the truth of what has happened, Desmond, I would welcome your aid gladly."

Desmond is still tense as he gestures exaggeratedly to the main door of the house with a quiet, "After you, Ezio." But there is a small quirk at the corners of the man's well-defined mouth, and despite his fear for his family, Ezio is pleased to at last have his apparition's name. He is also no longer certain he is hallucinating but there is much of the world Ezio does not understand and his first concern is not for the strange golden figure trailing him across the rooftops to the Palazzo della Signoria.

His first concern, as the two of them clear the last rooftop to the backside of the prison building, are the guards. Ezio growls to himself, subvocal and vibrating, as he sees the guards with his Gift, bleeding red across the space for Ezio track clearly. At any other time, Ezio would feel fortunate he has never had reason to visit the prison, but without knowing the layout of the building and the movement of the guards, Ezio runs the constant risk of being seen and captured, which he can ill afford. There are plenty of scaffoldings to climb and his Gift is pulling him by the guts towards the high tower at the front of the building, where Father, Federico, and Petruccio must be, but how to get there?

Crouched low under a shadowy overhang on the next building, Ezio's deep red doublet blends in, almost entirely concealing the brighter color of his shirt, night having fallen and leaving swathes of darkness across the skyline. Desmond, ever the apparition, cannot be seen by the guards and stands on the edge of the building, as close to the Palazzo della Signoria as he can get, watching the nearest guard make his rounds with amber eyes that glow with an inner luminescence. And then without a word, Desmond makes the long leap to the prison's lowest roofline, while the guard has his back to the wall, and begins a slow, deliberate climb up the scaffolding to the next level, pausing as the guards move and turn, keeping always out of their line of sight. It takes Ezio a long moment to realize that Desmond is moving as if he were visible to the guards, showing Ezio the easiest way up the building. "Brilliant," he whispers, and waits for the guard to turn his back again before following the gleaming white of Desmond's doublet.

There is only one moment where Ezio's heart almost stops in his chest: as he darts from the protected side of a guard post to where Desmond is waiting by the prisoner's tower, he sees the guard at the corner of the roof jolt, as if he hears the soft rushing of Ezio's steps. Ezio only tucks his head and presses himself for more speed, because to stop would be to be caught. Desmond must see something in Ezio's body language, because he turns and begins a rapid climb up the tower, Ezio a half-step behind him. They are nearly halfway up when Ezio hears a raspy cough from one of the windows that is entirely too familiar and Ezio locks his limbs in place, clinging to the stonework, so he does not fall.

Petruccio.

Not that Annetta would lie, not about something so important, but he had hoped… He no longer knows what he had hoped, and the Florentine night seems deeper and more threatening than it has since before his tenth birthday: if his family, his youngest and most fragile sibling, could be carted off to prison, there are monsters in Florence that Ezio does not see, even with his Gift. He must speak to Father, and yet he cannot leave Petruccio without seeing him. Ezio scrambles around the tower, checking each window as he goes, until he finds Petruccio, curled up miserably, one hand over his mouth as another bout of coughing takes him.

"Baby brother! Petruccio, are you alright?!" Ezio cries out, trying to keep his voice as low as he can so not to alert any guards that might be in the tower. A quick glance at the overcast sky leaves him with the impression of the waxing moon high above, peeking through the clouds, and it must be late indeed. Hopefully too late for any guards to be up and about. 

The bars on the window are close together, almost tight enough Ezio cannot get his forearm through, but it does little to stop Petruccio's thin limbs. Ezio draws as much comfort as he can from the fact that, though cold, Petruccio is at least still alive and the young boy nearly begins crying at the sight of his elder sibling. The wetness in his eyes is as heartbreaking to Ezio as his brother's flat unpresented scent overlaid with fear and sickness. 

Ezio has smelt so much fear today, he is worried the sour scent of it will linger in his nose forever.

"Ezio," Petruccio says quietly, around another cough, "what's going on?"

With a shake of his head, Ezio replies, honesty like acid against his tongue, "I wish I knew." As his apparition clambers carefully back down towards Ezio, the alpha projects as much competence and confidence as he can and can see how much better it makes Petruccio feel, a perfect mix of their parents in his features that only compounds the wish in Ezio's chest that this were only a bad dream. "I will see you out of there, Petruccio, I promise. I must see Father, he will know what to do."

Petruccio nods, leaning in to the window at Ezio's gesture, and it soothes both of them to have Ezio reaffirm the familiar scent mark the older Auditore leave across Petruccio's cheek with a sweep of his fingers. At a nudge, Petruccio returns to the tiny cot, cradling his cheek in his hand as if to keep the scent of family close. 

From an arm's length up the tower and over his shoulder, Desmond watches with a strange, tense expression, nothing bad or threatening that would make Ezio's still present instincts come to the fore. But without scent clues or the mysterious problem of the overlaid feelings coming from the man, Ezio can only guess at what might be longing he sees on his face. Ezio puts those thoughts aside and uses the windowsill to gain some height, putting him even with his apparition. Despite the strange expression, the man's amber eyes are intensely warm, approving, and it only reaffirms to Ezio that Desmond does intend to help, and wants to fiercely, despite whatever circumstances surround the man. It seems he is being as intensely studied, Desmond's eyes flicking over his face before he nods, "Your father is in the highest cell. Let's go."

There is little else to do but follow, when Desmond uses long limbs to scale the wall to the highest window; Desmond reaches, high up past the window to swing up onto the roof of the tower, leaning back over the edge once he is up. "I'll keep watch up here," he says, pushing the white hood of his strange doublet out of his face so he can look Ezio in the eye, "and I'll try to keep an ear on the guards inside. Hopefully, I'll be able to give you enough warning to keep you from… well, from getting caught."

"My thanks to you, Desmond," breathes Ezio, barely loud enough to be heard, and then moves to Father's cell window. When he peeks inside, Father is seated on the edge of his cot, elbows on his knees, and he is rubbing his hands over his face, feeling carefully around the black eye that is swelling up before he lets out a gusty sigh. Never in Ezio's memory has Father ever looked so defeated, and the strong pheromones of Father's alpha scent are bitter, pulling Ezio's own instincts up again.

"Father!"

Father's head snaps up, and he surges to the window in two strides, hands reaching through the bars for Ezio, who cannot stop the fear and worry and love that drops his head into his father's warm, calloused hands, Father's palms cupping Ezio's cheeks as Father turns his head this way and that, looking for injury. "Ezio, passerotto!" Father says at last. 

_Little sparrow_ had been his parents' nickname for him growing up, but he had not heard it in some time, and its reappearance makes Ezio sniffle as tears unexpectedly well in his eyes, feeling like a little boy younger than Petruccio instead of a presented young man nearly to his adulthood; Father brushes a thumb under one of Ezio's eyes before he can blink away the wetness.

"Father, what happened? Are you alright?" Ezio asks.

"I took a bit of a beating, but I'm fine," reassures Father. "What of your mother and sister?" He begins a sweeping motion with his fingertips across Ezio's jaw that draws tension from Ezio's shoulders, a deliberate reaffirmation of their family scentmark, the same as Ezio had done for Petruccio, and it takes a moment for Ezio to drag his thoughts together to answer.

"Safe, now," he whispers. "But Mother, she was in shock—and I sent them away—"

"Yes," says Father, "she wasn't pleased when the guards stormed the bedrooms to take Petruccio. I had to take him with us myself, for fear your mother might incite the guards to more violence." Father's concern for his wife and mate is clearer than the night around them and Ezio winces at the thought of the fight Mother must have put up, if the Auditore alpha thought the better option was to go along with the city guards. Then, all at once, Father seems to understand that Ezio had sent them away and hisses, "Annetta took them to Paola? Good work, son." 

His thoughts might be hazy, slow like the thickest honey, but Ezio would bet his last florin on the fact that he did not specify with whom he had sent his family and whispers, choked, "Father, how did you know I sent them with Annetta? Did you—did you know this was going to happen?!"

The look on Father's face would be of a kind on his apparition's, conflicted and unhappy, and he grimaces, the lines creasing his face making him look much older than his years. "Something like, but not this soon. And it was never supposed to have involved my children." He sighs again, "It doesn't matter now."

"What do you mean?" Ezio begs, one of his hands coming up to clasp Father's wrist, where he still has his hands at Ezio's face. Ezio's fingers are shaking and he wishes he could make them stop.

From above, Desmond hisses, "Ezio, hurry up."

It is as if Father can sense Desmond's urgency, because he only shakes his head. "There's no time for all of it, passerotto. Listen: return to the house, to my office, and use your gift to find a hidden door there. Beyond is a chest, take everything inside that chest, son, no matter how strange some of it may seem to you. It's all important. Do you understand?"

Ezio nods into Father's hands, tucking his nose against his wrist for that smell of family, his father's alpha scent comforting, even marred with fear, and says, "Yes, Father, I understand. I will take everything."

Father sweeps his fingers again across Ezio's cheeks and cups his face, and Ezio can nearly feel the kiss Father would place on his brow. "Among the contents is a letter and some documents. Those must go to Messer Uberto, he was with me last week."

The name spurs a memory, of a heavy-set beta man in ceremonial robes seated comfortably in Father's study, and a low, gravelly tone as he spoke; a lawyer, who had been working with Father on some project. "The Gonfaloniere, I remember," answers Ezio. "Are the Pazzi behind this, Father? There was a note at the pigeon coop, you sent me to get—"

"Ezio, the guards are coming!" Desmond's head appears over the edge of the roof and his amber eyes are glowing with their own luminescence, casting the alarmed look on his face in shadow. Ezio looks back to his father desperately, and they both hear the clang of an inner door shutting in the tower.

"Go, passerotto, go now!" Father gives him the slightest push, his fingers dragging across Ezio's cheekbones and leaving a trail of scent there for the younger alpha, then he hurries over to his cot. Ezio can feel something building in his chest but does as Father orders, climbing to the roof to crouch next to his apparition and snarl silently, helpless to do anything but as Father ordered: find a hidden chest and ferry some documents. Father had been promising to teach him how to fight with a sword, something even Federico had only just started, but even unskilled as he is, his hands itch to take up a blade and fight his way through to his brothers, to Father, and free them.

Directly beneath them, there is a bang, like a metal cell door slamming against the wall, and then Father's voice, shouting, "What the fuck do you want?" It is delivered in just the right tone to start a scuffle, and Ezio takes advantage of the diversion to scramble to the other side of the rooftop, Desmond close behind, where some birds had made a perch, right on the edge of the roof. Activating his Gift, he looks down to see a pile of hay on the lower rooftop, glowing white with the foreknowledge of a safe landing, and another perch with a cart far, far below in the main square before the Palazzo della Signoria. Ezio takes a deep breath and sends himself down, first into the hay, and then again into the cart, before fleeing back to the Palazzo.


	5. In which there is interaction and worldbuilding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezio has been given a way forward by his father, but there is much of the world he does not know. Luckily, he has a guide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically this is early (you're welcome), but I'm not sure if I'll have an update for May yet. I've been working more hours and my creativity is somewhat shot, what with all the COVID-19 stuff going on.
> 
> Hopefully I can make some time for writing...
> 
> Also, because I'm silly and forgot: thank you to everyone who has commented or left kudos. Each interaction makes me smile like a loon.

Desmond says nothing the entire time back, only following and watching with a crease between his eyebrows and a tense line to his mouth. His silence, not unusual after weeks of his stalking, is aggravating because Ezio wants answers. Still mired in tense quiet, the light of a false dawn breaking grey-pink on the horizon, they drop into the courtyard of the house, Desmond with all the smooth grace his long, slim limbs grant him, Ezio shakily, his whole body burning with stress from the sheer distances he had crossed across the rooftops that day.

And it had only been a day, thought Ezio somewhat disbelievingly; the memory of gathering feathers at Petruccio's behest felt ages ago, instead of the previous morning. How could so much have changed in so little time? In some ways, all he wants to do was curl up in his bed, surrounded by the smell of his family, and wake up from this nightmare to Mother's kind chiding for him to join the breakfast table after a night of revelry around the Florence of yesterday, which was bright and lively.

Instead, Ezio takes a deep breath, forcing the air out through his nose so he does not put his fist through a wall, and storms to Father's office. He forgoes even a candle, navigating the familiar halls of his home by memory and his Gift, which illuminates everything in that same glittering silver to which he is so accustomed. It appears his apparition needs nothing else either, amber eyes lit from within.

The door is ajar when Ezio gets down the hall, and even before he steps inside, he can tell the room has been ripped apart. From the state of the destruction, Ezio nudging the door open enough to slip inside, Desmond looking around curiously, the guards had been searching for something: Father's books are strewn haphazardly across the rugs, pulled wholesale from their places on the heavy bookshelves; each drawer in Father's desk had been pulled free, left stacked on the desktop, some of them flipped over as if to look for hidden compartments; even the cushions on the chairs had been ripped open like so much garbage. Along with the scent of the guards hanging heavy in the room, the disrespect to his father's things nearly breaks Ezio's control, a snarl building between his teeth.

"Ezio, I think I see a switch," Desmond says, brushing past the alpha with a ghostly touch, words and tone chosen to placate, and, at last, Ezio looks around at more than the state of the room. Ezio shivers at the lack of heat, lack of smell, lack of true presence that surrounds Desmond; he felt the touch of the man's shoulder as a touch of solid smoke, at once tangible and somehow not. It also confirms that Desmond has the same Gift Ezio does, and Ezio deliberately sets that thought aside. The apparition steps carefully between the piles of books and the overturned chairs to point at a stone in the back wall of the fireplace, a stone that glows gold with interest. Now that his attention has been drawn, Ezio can see the lack of usual evidence of a fire—no ash in the hearth, no poker, not even some spare logs—and he wastes no further time.

"Thank you, Desmond," murmurs Ezio, and he presses the stone, watching as the whole back of the fireplace slides open with a loud grinding of gears. "Why did Father never tell me of this before?" he asks pointlessly as he ducks his head and enters the small room beyond the hidden door. The room is made entirely of stone, and there is barely enough room for him to stand upright. Desmond, taller than Ezio, is forced to hunch his shoulders, though he hardly seems bothered to have to do so. On the far wall, Ezio sees the chest Father spoke of and hurries to it at once, flinging it open.

He draws out hooded white robes, not as white as Desmond's bizarre doublet but of a shade, and a cape of dark red and leather, both of which he hangs over his left arm as he fishes most of the rest of the chest's contents out—a thick leather belt with a strange arced symbol for the buckle; a fine sword, finer even than the one Father had promised to Federico; and two pieces of yellowed parchment with writing Ezio cannot decipher. Desmond makes a sound like a cat dunked in water at the sight of the old pages and reaches for them with a hand that suddenly shakes.

"Do you know what these are?" Curiosity overrides the fear still bubbling in his chest, and he passes the two sheets to his apparition.

The look on Desmond's face is, by Ezio's best guess, grief, and the man shakes his head as he follows the words on one of the pages from right to left with his left forefinger. "No, but I know who wrote them. I'd recognize that handwriting anywhere," whispers Desmond, and the last part is more to himself. Then he shakes his head, as if to clear it; it almost looks like it pains him to extend the pages back to Ezio. "They'll wait, though. Your family is more important right now."

Ezio holds up his empty hand. "Keep them," he says, and gestures with his loaded-down arm to the chest, "there is still more for me to get, including the documents Father wants taken to the Gonfaloniere." Desmond's mouth flexes, frowning, at the reminder of the lawyer. "I would be more comfortable knowing I cannot mix them up, even by accident." While his statement is the truth, it also an opportunity to learn more about this strange being, and extend some trust to the man. He can now also rule out hallucinations, because no figment of Ezio's imagination would or should be able to make the pages vanish from sight into the pouch on the front of their doublet—at least, he hopes no hallucination could do that.

The pages stashed almost lovingly, Desmond looks curiously over the gear Ezio is holding, before he asks, "Can I help you hold any of this, Ezio? We should probably hurry." Between the two of them, it takes only moments for Ezio to shed his own doublet, pull on the strange white and red robes with their long crimson cape, and switch his shorter boots for the tall, nearly armored ones at the bottom of the chest. He is very lucky and very grateful that the boots—which must have been made for his father—fit him, all grown Auditore men of a similar height and size, except across the shoulders where the young alpha is growing into the wide frame of the elder alpha Auditore.

The belt sits strangely, high on his waist to hold the robes closed and tight to his chest, and he can hear Desmond's inhalation when he sees the arced buckle. At last, the only things left in the chest are the documents that must go to the Gonfaloniere and a bracer that draws another reaction from Desmond, a jolted motion as he reaches for the broken blade on the inner face of the bracer and stops himself.

There is so much Ezio clearly does not know, the lack of knowledge infuriating, and he lashes the bracer to his right arm with jerking, angry movements. His voice is hard when he demands of his apparition, "After we have saved my father and my brothers, you will explain everything?"

Desmond's head dips, his gaze set almost uncomfortably on the symbol on the belt's buckle, until the words all but tumble from his mouth. "Yes, I promise. Everything you want to know, everything I can explain—all of it. I promise."

The man is so earnest, every line of his face so sincere, it loosens Ezio's lungs until he draws a deep breath, blowing it out slowly as he nods before reaching for the sword in Desmond's hands.

"Here," his apparition says, "you looked like you've never held one of these. I can help." Expertly, he finds the buckle on the sword belt, undoes it smoothly, and draws the belt easily around Ezio's hips; the alpha helps by holding his arms up, using his elbow to keep the red cape from falling into Desmond's way.

"You know how to use a sword, then?" asks Ezio as Desmond tugs the belt just so, angling the way the sheathe lays along Ezio's left leg and then does the belt up snugly. The man's touch is still strange, ghostly and intangible yet still somehow firm, but Ezio is beginning to grow used to it, the same way he is growing familiar with the man in general.

Desmond makes a last adjustment, responding, "Yeah, I do. I'm a little out of practice, but—well, I could teach you." He nods to himself and steps back. "Remind me, we have to take those to… Alberto?"

"Alberti, Uberto Alberti," Ezio corrects, making sure the documents are in one of the pouches on his new belt. "He is the Gonfaloniere of Justice in Florence, do you know what he does?" With a gentle nudge, he moves past Desmond out of the hidden room and he presses the stone switch in the fireplace once Desmond has followed him out.

"No, I can't say I do," admits Desmond easily, though his cheeks flush with color.

Ezio starts down the hall, Gift active though the first birds of morning are beginning to sing, as he explains, "The Gonfaloniere manages the justice of the State of Florence, as part of the Signoria. If my father says he can get this sorted out, he can."

"Was he that man in those gaudy red robes?" When Ezio looks back with a nod, in the same motion as he opens the door to the dining room, there is a dissatisfied twist to Desmond's finely sculpted mouth, a suspicious cast to his eyes. Now that some of his emotions have settled and he has a plan, Ezio finds himself beyond ravenous and he would need something to eat before he could make the trek to Messer Alberti's home. "Ezio, I don't know… When he was here last time, there was something—something off about him."

They dart through the dining room, and the kitchen, and into the pantry there; Annetta always has bread, cheese, and some dried meats stocked up so they are never without the basics for a wine platter. The pantry is even darker than the rest of the house, a small nook in the kitchen kept cool and dry, and even Ezio's Gift is almost not enough to see by as he snags a knife and he makes quick work of portioning out a hefty ration for himself. "Would you like anything to eat, Desmond?" Ezio asks distractedly, stuffing a piece of cheese in his mouth with a groan when he cuts into that too.

"You know, I'm not sure I can eat. I haven't been hungry, anyway," but the apparition takes a little of the bread Ezio offers, a compulsion of his instincts to provide for those around him. The trust shown when Desmond tosses the bread into his mouth immediately gives Ezio something good to focus on for the first time since his family's imprisonment, and it is equally satisfying when Desmond closes his eyes to savor the morsel. "Okay, not hungry, but that is super good," he says at last, his wording unusual in his strangely accented Italian. The food seems to have settled him, though, to Ezio's pleasure, and Ezio is quick to wrap up as much of the dried foods as he can, minus the portion the young alpha is working through, as Desmond cautions, "Better have it and not need it. I don't trust this Alberti. Isn't there anyone else you can take the documents to?"

"Why do you not trust him?" Ezio asks, hiding the packed food in the pouches on the wide belt at his waist, but watching as his apparition leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, amber eyes dark as he considers the floor seriously.

"You know I have the same… gift you have, right? I was able to find the switch your dad talked about," starts Desmond, slowly. There is a weight to each word and, for the first time, Ezio realizes that Desmond must be several years older than even Leonardo, and it makes the alpha feel terribly young and so very out of his depth. Instead, Ezio nods, trying to disguise his sudden sense of insecurity, and makes a wordless noise of encouragement. "Have you ever noticed that people turn different colors, depending on their intentions towards you?"

Ezio waves a hand dismissively, trying for bravado, trying to ignore the nervousness that someone might know his Gift better than he himself. "Yes, of course: red and blue, silver and gold, what of it?"

"Do you know why people show up in certain colors?" Desmond's eyes flash, bright and dark and bright again, and then glow steadily, the inner luminescence at last clicking for Ezio that the man must be using his own Gift. But Ezio, even though he knows his family are all marked with silver, Annetta with blue, has never thought about what the colors mean. Certain colors showed up on certain people and he had always thought it was specific to the person, not that the color was the common factor. His confusion must show clearly on his features because Desmond sighs with a rueful smile and Ezio tries to smooth his expression out as he continues eating.

"Okay, let's start at the basics, then," the man says, with no trace in his tone of the sigh he had let out. "Depending on what color people show up as can tell you a lot about their motivations. Blue is someone who's an ally, red an enemy, white for safety in places or passivity in people, the sort of people who aren't going to turn you in but aren't going to help you, either."

"And silver?" asks Ezio around a mouthful of dried meat, as certain things begin making sense in his head.

"There isn't much silver around here, is there? Your family, a few others on the edge of the city," Desmond muses, turning his gaze unerringly towards where the cluster of invisible silver domes rise above the roofline in the poorest district of Florence, where those other families with mated alpha-omega pairs at the fore lived. "Your parents are mates, and—well, it's a myth to me, but well-suited mates create a kind of bubble around their home. And the people close to those mates, kids and stuff, they're silver too."

It reminds Ezio of what Mother had told him when he had presented as an alpha on his sixteenth birthday, what she said her family believed, and he hears her voice in his head so clearly it is almost as if she is standing next to him. _"Ezio, my son, the Church may be a rock of our society but even they can be wrong. Alphas and omegas were created together, to help one another, to love one another; there is little more powerful and more protective than the bond between a compatible alpha and their omega. My father told me, and her mother told her, that an alpha-omega bond melds together a tight family, promotes peace and harmony, and I think we need more of that in the world. When it is your time, know your father and I will be proud of you no matter who you choose as a partner. But there are some rules, Ezio, that are not meant to be followed and, if you fall in love with an omega, don't pass up a bond just because the Church says you should."_

"Silver is the color of those bonded alphas and omegas, and their families, then?" Ezio uses the question to pull himself from the recollection of Mother's words, so compelling he remembers them perfectly. He offers the last of the cheese and bread to Desmond, who takes the piece of cheese with quiet thanks, and pops the bread into his own mouth, watching as Desmond enjoys the bite with a look of simple pleasure before he continues.

"Yes. And gold is for important objects, and for two kinds of people: people who you are extraordinarily interested in, have an intense connection with—or want to have an intense connection with, anyway," finishes Desmond quickly. At that, Ezio thinks immediately of the gold that illuminates his apparition when he looks at the man with his Gift. With barely a thought, he activates it, just to see the glitter of color around Desmond's hair. "Or someone shows up gold because, well—" Desmond pauses, folding his arms across his chest uncomfortably "—because they're threats, targets."

Ezio mulls over this new information, and tries to remember if he has ever seen anyone—besides Desmond—who appears gold in his enhanced vision; Cristina might, given that he thinks he may be falling in love with the beta, but he has never had reason to look on her with his Gift, and which he thinks now is a shame of which he will tell no one. But it is only too easy to tell what color the Gonfaloniere must have shown up to Desmond's own Gift, if he does not trust the man, and Ezio leans heavily against the countertop of the kitchen as he realizes the decision now before him.

Father had told him the documents were meant for Uberto: Father trusted him, and had trusted Ezio with the task of getting the documents to him. If there was anyone Ezio could rely on to know who to trust, Ezio was certain of his father's ability to do so. If Father said to trust the Gonfaloniere, there was little reason to question that determination. But the circumstances surrounding Desmond's appearance and the knowledge shared about their Gifts, while suspicious, speak of something beyond Ezio's comprehension. To dismiss the apparition's concern outright, when he had used his Gift to look at the Gonfaloniere and had somehow seen the beta's apparently golden coloring, would be beyond foolish.

And yet there is something thrumming in his throat, the instinct of a younger alpha in the family unit of an older one, to follow the easy route and obey, do as he is told without question. With so little information about Desmonnd's background, he can only put so much weight on his apparition's concern that the Gonfaloniere is not his father's ally.

Ezio makes his decision with a firm shake of his head and he straightens from where he leans on the countertop, making his way slowly back through the house, the first birds of morning beginning to make way for the full chorus and telling him only too well how early it is, dawn near on the horizon if he has a guess. "If what you say is true, then Messer Alberti will show up gold to my own Gift?

"I think he should," says Desmond hesitantly. "But full disclosure, you're the only other person I've… talked to, who has Eagle Vision." He flushes red again, bright across his cheeks, and follows Ezio lead obediently.

"Eagle Vision?" Ezio asks, pausing by the front door with his head cocked to the side curiously.

"Yeah, that's what I call it. It works best when you're high up, like a bird, and the person I… learned from was named after an eagle, so. Eagle Vision." At the mention of this person, Desmond's hands dip back into the pouch on his doublet, and from the motions, he is stroking the mysterious pages. _Is it not such a coincidence,_ Ezio thinks, _that the person who wrote those pages is also the person who taught his apparition to use his Gift?_ His desire to know what is on those pages grows, but work must come before satiating his curiosity.

"I want to trust you, Desmond," and with that, Ezio at last opens the front door, turning from his strange ghostly presence, "but my father said to take these to the Gonfaloniere. I will at least give him the benefit of the doubt." The young alpha steps outside and then stills at the ringing sound of a drawn blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor edits made 4/9/2020.


	6. In which a foreseen tragedy becomes reality.

Two guards stand alert at the entrance to the Palazzo's front courtyard, one at each side of the gate. The guard on the right of the gate looks back over his shoulder into the road, hand on his sword hilt. With it still so early, despite the loudness of the birds, the sky is only just beginning to go pink at the edges and stars still glitter far above; there are only a handful of people on the streets, vendors by the looks of the boxes they carry. The left guard, with sword drawn and held loose and low at his side, grins a bloodthirsty grin and moves towards Ezio.

"Traitor," the guard says, "I don't know how you got past us, but we've been told to bring you in." He swings his blade in a quick circle and his grin grows a fraction wider. "Then again, I wasn't told you had to be brought in alive." 

Desmond steps up close to Ezio's left and, gently and subtly, he reaches down and loosens the sword in its sheath at Ezio's side. Ezio wishes he had pushed harder for those sword lessons and hides his swallow with a dip of his head. "That sounds bad for my health," boasts Ezio as confidently as he can, hoping his bravado now will hide the shaking of his hands and the tremor in his voice, better than it had hidden his ignorance earlier, when Desmond had spoken of their Gift, their Eagle Vision. "Maybe there are other options to discuss?" 

"Be ready," Desmond whispers from behind his left shoulder, and the intangibility of his presence is comforting now, in the wake of so much change. "Think of the blade like a dance. And if you have to, kill them. They're here to kill you, don't let them." He must know he will only get in Ezio's way, because the alpha hears the running steps Desmond takes, though Ezio's attention stays carefully on the slowly approaching guard. 

"No, traitor, no other options for you." The guard charges across the courtyard, his sword pointed at Ezio's chest, and Ezio finds himself reaching across his body for the blade at his side without thought, activating his Gift as he does. With the sharpness of his vision, and with his apparition's advice in mind, it Is instinct to use his own weapon to push the guard's sword out, over his left shoulder, and take two swift steps to the right, feet moving to a beat of their own volition. 

The guard goes past Ezio with a bellow of rage. The second guard turns at the sound, unsheathing his sword as he does, and Desmond's wordless noise of urgency is barely necessary: Ezio surges into motion, crossing the six strides of the open space to use the speed and the weight of his body to plunge his blade through the gap between the guard's chestplate and the line of his helmet. The body goes down with an ugly squelch, as the blade rips free of the man's neck, and an arcing spray of crimson follows the muted steel gleam. Ezio all but falls away from the spray, unconsciously moving towards where Desmond is hanging from one of the sconces in the wall and away from the remaining guard. 

Despite years of spats in the streets with Vieri, and other young men and the few women who looked down on the Auditore family for having a mated alpha-omega couple as their foundation, Ezio had never done real damage to another person, not like this. The body on the flagstones is completely limp, limbs sprawling in every direction, and blood beginning to pool under the man from the gaping wound Ezio's sword cut through his neck. No matter how he tries to turn away, Ezio stares at the blood, the same color the guard was in life under the eyes of his Gift, and it chills his bones to see the lack of color over a human body. To think, Ezio had done that… 

Even when calling for his death, Vieri was a coward more than anything, running away at the first sign Ezio truly had the upper hand so they could pester each other and come to blows over Cristina's virtue or Auditore honor another day. And besides his longtime rival, Ezio really had done his best, despite his family's endless teasing that he went looking for trouble, to stay out of trouble as much as possible; he had broken more than a few noses and certainly that many arms—Federico had never had so much bad luck in the taverns as he had the last two years, it seemed—but he had never caused so much damage with so little effort. 

"Think later," the young alpha commands himself quietly, and forcefully turns away from the pool of blood with a dog-like shake of his head. The last guard is staring at the body also, with a shocked look on his face, mouth dropped open, and Ezio ruthlessly takes advantage of his foe's distraction. The sword goes as easily through this guard's throat as it did the first one, and it is only after Ezio has backed away from the newly dead, his heart pounding in his chest and limbs shivering with nerves, that reality truly settles on him: he has just killed two people. 

He breathes deeply through the nausea, forcing himself to look at the two bodies in the Palazzo courtyard, and it is only the fact that he has seen other dead bodies before that keeps him from gagging. From behind him comes a muted thump, and Ezio whirls around with his blade extended; he pulls up just before the steel connects with the vulnerable line of his apparition's neck, the man holding both empty hands up placatingly. Ezio droops with a sigh, sword tip nearly to the ground, the shuddering in his muscles increasing until he is all but shaking. 

The last twenty-four hours have lasted forever and Ezio wants them to be over. 

"Good job," Desmond says after a second, moving slowly until he can take Ezio's wrist in a gentle, ghostly grip. "Your first kill?" With a swift motion, he expertly flicks the blade, and the young alpha watches the splatter of red droplets uncomprehendingly, until the sword is almost clean, and then Desmond helps Ezio through the motion of sheathing it. It is not a heavy weapon, only perhaps three pounds, but the moment it is out of hand, Ezio feels the strain of the short fight in his already abused muscles. 

"Yes," whispers Ezio. In his mind's eye, he sees the way the red that had marked the two guards had wavered and gone out as they died. He does not think that he will ever forget how that looks, even if he were never to see it again. "We have to hurry. Will you help me?" 

Desmond nods. "You don't even have to ask." 

Annetta had warned him that the guards were looking for him, too, he thinks to himself reprovingly as he and Desmond climb the latticework on the walls to the roof of the Palazzo, and just like with his instinctive disbelief that the guards would arrest Petruccio, he did not believe they could possibly be after him. It burns like frost in his veins, the knowledge that, for the first time in his memory, Florence is his enemy, not his benevolent playground. It makes him keep low to the roofline, a mirror of his apparition who stays two paces ahead of him, head swiveling back and forth as he sees the guards posted on the rooftops and then unerringly guides Ezio past them without their notice, taking his direction from Ezio's barely there whispers. 

Their pace is so swift, Ezio is panting, and even Desmond is breathing deeply as they reach their destination. The young alpha drops heavily down onto the flagstones in the Gonfaloniere's courtyard and beats a closed fist on Messer Alberti's front door. It opens to a steward, after several long minutes where Ezio leans against the wall and tries to sooth the ache in his lungs. The steward takes one look at the young man and quickly brings him into the house, Desmond following on his heels, and fetches the Gonfaloniere immediately and without a word. 

"Ezio Auditore?" the beta asks incredulously, coming from down the entry hallway. "What are you doing here at this hour?" 

"It—I don't—" gasps Ezio. He cannot get enough air, truly, but he has enough presence of mind to activate his Gift, and only the fact that he is near to passing out keeps him from recoiling when the Gonfaloniere's broad features are hidden under a wash of gold. His apparition was right, but the beta _feels_ safe and now, faced with the man, Ezio wants only to complete the duties his father had given him. 

"Take a moment," Messer Alberti says, placing a hand on Ezio's shoulder, "collect your thoughts." 

Ezio nods and it is still several minutes more before he is not winded, straightening from his bent over position, and immediately catching the scent of an alpha clinging to the Gonfaloniere's robes when Alberti moves to accommodate him. It is not an alpha's scent he is familiar with, and something about it sets his teeth on edge, but he cannot tell if that is his newly awakened paranoia or if there is truly something to be alarmed about. 

"Messer, my father and brothers have been imprisoned," he explains. Despite the fight in the courtyard and the flight over the Florentine rooftops, the documents Father had sent him to get are unmoved in their pouch, and Ezio extends them to the Gonfaloniere without hesitation. "I was told to bring you these." There is a hiss from his apparition, but Ezio cannot possibly find out what the ghostly man wants while in the presence of another person. 

"Ah," responds the Gonfaloniere as he takes the pages, looking them over quickly, "I see now." He gives Ezio a pat on the shoulder and reassures the alpha, "It's only a misunderstanding. I'll clear everything up." 

A man, hooded and clothed in deeply red robes more true in color even than the Gonfaloniere's, comes down the staircase nearby, dips his head to Messer Alberti, and then continues on through the hallway into the rest of the house. The hood entirely disguises his features but the smell of him is the same as on the Gonfaloniere's robes and Ezio can smell how deep the scent lingers. Whoever this is, he has visited this house often. 

"How will you clear this up?" questions Ezio, once the hooded man is gone. 

The Gonfaloniere gives him another pat on the shoulder, waving the documents around a little with his other hand. "These contain evidence of a conspiracy against your family and against the city. I'll present these at their hearing later this morning and they'll be released," he explains patiently. 

A third hiss from Desmond is almost entirely drowned out by the relieved sigh that gusts from Ezio. "Thank you, sir, I appreciate it more than you know." 

"Of course, child," says Messer Alberti. "Do you need a place to stay, in the meantime? You're more than welcome here." 

Ezio shakes his head. The scent of the other alpha is off-putting enough that, until his family is returned to him and his life settles, Ezio does not feel confident in his ability to share space with another of his own presentation, to push down the instincts that scream at him not to trust another alpha not part of his family. "No, thank you, I will meet you in the square," Ezio says, as gratefully and gracefully as he can. 

Messer Alberti smiles at him reassuringly. "Don't worry, Ezio. Everything is going to be fine." 

With a quickly sketched bow, Ezio thanks the beta again, opens the door behind him, and leaves, Desmond nearly treading on his heels. Once he is out of sight of the Gonfaloniere's house, he and his apparition fling themselves up to the rooftops and find a garden, glowing white under the Vision of the Eagle. Ezio settles inside it, laying flat on the roof tiles and stretching out with a groan. It feels incredible not to be on his feet, nearly good enough to put him to sleep, which he wakes himself from with a shake, sitting up and beginning his stretches to keep himself loose after the amount of running he has done. 

He is nearly finished stretching before he looks up to find Desmond. The man is crouched on the wall of the garden, just inside the curtains hanging to keep the cooler air trapped, and pacing from one corner of the garden to the other with a worried frown creasing his mouth, his eyebrows pinched together low over his amber eyes. 

"Desmond?" Ezio asks at last, sitting on the ground and reaching for his toes. He has counted eight repetitions back and forth without pause. 

"What time is this hearing?" It is the most forceful Ezio has yet heard the man, the question hard in Desmond's strange accent, and Desmond does not pause in his pacing even as he asks. 

"Soon. It is nearly full morning now, and the hearing should be perhaps an hour after that." The reminder of the hearing, and of his imprisoned family, makes him ache in his heart in a way he cannot ache of the body, and Ezio brings his wrist up to his nose, closing his eyes and scenting for the clinging traces of Father's potent essence. Never before has the familiar scent of family been so comforting and Ezio needs every source of comfort he can get, unconsciously curling around the limb. Like the feeling of Florence being against him, his seventeen years do not make Ezio feel like a young man on the cusp of adulthood, but a child chasing uselessly after his mother's skirt, and he swears to himself that after this has blown over, he will beg his father, his brother, his apparition—anyone he can—for all the guidance he can get. 

"W-what are you doing?" The tone of Desmond's voice wavers, gone from assertive to tentative, and Ezio can hear the stutter of his steps on the wall as he stops unexpectedly. Ezio does not even open his eyes, listening to the stillness of Desmond's movement and lingering in the cloud of Father's pheromones, that powerful scent of steel and paper and ink. He can feel himself settling, becoming grounded in his body in a way he had not been since the evening before, the rabbit-quick beat of his heart slowing. Since the sound of that tolling bell in his head, he can _think_. 

"Do you not have family scentmarks where you are from?" questions Ezio and the prolonged silence is answer enough. This is instinct so basic, he is honestly worried that his apparition does not realize what Ezio is doing. Certainly, the Church has upped their persecution of alpha-omega mated couples, but Ezio cannot imagine that even an organization as powerful and widespread as the religion could eradicate the most fundamental responses of the human body. Even Claudia, a beta with the weakest sense of smell excepting for unpresented Petruccio, obeyed the instinct of family and family bonds, leaving her own faint rose scent on each of them and relaxing at the reaffirmations of their scents on her. 

Ezio drags his eyes open and meets Desmond's wide amber eyes, sees the flush on his cheeks, and is just about to ask what sort of place Desmond comes from, if they do not even have family scentmarks, when the sounds of a commotion rise from the streets below. With one last pull of scent, Ezio climbs carefully out of the garden, and makes his way to the edge of the roof, looking down on the growing throng of people streaming toward the square before the Palazzo della Signoria. 

"Where are they headed?" Desmond asks grimly. Every moment they watch adds more and more people to the crowd, until it seems a flood, the noise growing to a cacophony. Ezio looks back at Desmond and sees the tight line of his mouth, the tenseness in his shoulders, how ready he is for action at any moment. With dawn broken, and the roofs of Florence are illuminated with the sun's early rays, it takes a much more focused look to see when his apparition activates his gift, amber eyes still glowing but more subtly. 

"The square," responds Ezio. "Follow me." 

There are so many people, and with a flash of his own Vision to see that there are only a few guards posted at the intersections of the streets, Ezio makes a quick decision to scale down the wall, ignoring the few shocked cries as he lands among the crowd. Desmond paces him from the roofline, moving without a hitch in his stride, as if he had not run half of Florence through the night. 

As they make the square, Desmond drops from an archway to fold himself into the shadow of Ezio's body, and then Ezio sees the platform before the Palazzo della Signoria and the breath he had caught dies in his throat on a whine. No wonder there are so many people here so early, Ezio thinks, as if from far away: on the execution platform stand Father, Federico, and Petruccio. They are still bound, their wrists tied behind them, and Ezio can see the shudder of Petruccio's shoulders as he coughs. 

It barely jostles the heavy noose around his neck. 

There, climbing the steps of the platform, is Messer Alberti, the executioner at his side, his red-robed houseguest trailing slowly after them. The noise from the crowd surges at the appearance of the Gonfaloniere and it takes a moment after the beta raises both arms before there is enough quiet for him to be heard. He turns to face Father, and announces to the crowd, "Giovanni Auditore, you and your accomplices stand accused of the crime of treason. Have you any evidence to counter this charge?" 

Treason? Ezio's horror is given form in the noise Desmond makes at his back, faint and wounded, and he does not need and yet appreciates the hand at his back urging him closer to the platform. He must get to his family and begins shouldering people aside urgently. 

"Yes," Father says, frustration curdling his voice with roughness. "The documents that were delivered to you, either last night or this morning!" Even facing this betrayal, Ezio is proud to call himself a member of House Auditore because Father stands there, bold, shoulders straight and back unbowed, mocking the noose, ignoring the dried blood on his face from the cut through his eyebrow which he must have gotten from the guards last night. Beside him, thankfully unharmed, Federico glares at the crowd but Ezio knows his brother, can see the shiver in his knees, the quake down his spine, and yet he stands firm. 

Ezio _will_ save them, _he must save them_. 

The Gonfaloniere shakes his head, spreading his arms as if he has nothing to hide, and says, almost apologetic, "I'm afraid I know nothing of these documents." 

Ezio still has half the crowd between him and the platform and screams anyway, "He lies!" His words are lost among the jeering and he can feel Desmond pressing him on silently. He hurries as quickly as he can, even as fear rises like gorge up his throat. 

The beta spends a long moment listening to the din the crowd makes as they all try shouting their judgement at once, and then turns to his red hooded companion, who dips his head in a slow nod. The Gonfaloniere nods back, then turns again to the crowd. "In the absence of any evidence compelling evidence to the contrary, I am bound to pronounce you guilty!" 

Father's lips pull off his teeth as he snarls, and Ezio can imagine the noise, deep and threatening. It spurs Ezio ever faster, but there are just too many people in the way. There is a moment of weightlessness in Ezio's guts as he finally breaches to near the very front of the crowd, just in time to hear— 

"You and your collaborators are hereby sentenced," the Gonfaloniere pronounces, "to death!" 

The roaring noise from the crowd nearly drowns out Father. "Uberto," he shouts, "you are a traitor! And one of them!" 

The executioner, who had stood silently behind the three noosed Auditores, moves to a lever at the far end of the platform from the Gonfaloniere at a grand gesture from the beta, passing behind Petruccio and sneering at how the boy flinches. Ezio sees the man move, motion slower than the freezing of ice, sees Petruccio begin to sob, shoulders jerking horribly, tears coursing down his cheeks. Sees the defiance on Federico's features, which he memorizes desperately, still shoving his way through. 

Hears Father swear, as if through the haze of fever, when nothing in the world makes sense and every sound comes through layers of swaddling cotton, "You may take our lives this day, but we will have yours! We will have all of yours! I—" 

"Father!" Ezio screams, as he stumbles through the final row of the crowd into the space before the platform. He is in perfect place to see the lazy wave of the Gonfaloniere's hand, hear the heavy creak from the mechanism as the executioner throws the lever, and the three sharp cracks that follow, so close together they are nearly one sound. With a hollowness in his belly, Ezio knows he will break if he looks over to see the aftermath, and draws as much strength as he can from the ghostly hands that press to his shoulders behind him. There is a roar rising up inside him as he feels something, unnamed and unnoticed but vital, snap in his head. He cannot be sure it is not the most essential parts of him. 

There, perhaps three yards away, stands the man his apparition had warned him about: the Gonfaloniere, with his head turned to listen to his red hooded companion. At the other alpha's urging, Alberti turns, sees Ezio, and pointing to him, shouts to the guards lining the edges of the platform. "There! Grab the boy, he's one of them!" 

His apparition's words, whatever they are, do not break through the red haze of fury and loss that darkens Ezio's vision around the edges until all he can see is the armored brute lumbering toward him. How his sword ends up in his hand, when he springs across the open space to confront the guards being commanded to kill him by the man his father trusted, he does not know and does not care. There is but one goal in the entire world. 

Ezio Auditore will kill the Gonfaloniere of Florence if it is the last thing he does. 

In a crystallized moment, the young alpha watches with bared teeth as the brute makes his slow, weighted way forward, two city guards at his flanks with blades drawn. The battleaxe held loosely in the brute's hands gleams in the strong morning sunlight. Such a weapon is meant only for death and dismemberment and it will have to be handled carefully. From far away, someone begs, "Ezio, they're going to kill you! Run!" 

But there is no room in him for fear, or flight, or even grief, and not knowledge nor his apparition's begging will change his course, not when raw instinct has him in its grip. A low growl rumbles out of the young alpha's throat as he charges forward, just into range of the right-hand guard, blade singing with motion. These three must go, if he intends to complete his task—there is no room for error. 

With the Eagle's Vision, his Gift, the white-robed alpha can see through the red-soaked brute to the guard on the left, who surges into motion around the front of the armored axe-wielder, lumbering slowly. The guard in front of him is as unskilled in the use of a blade as the alpha and swings wildly, missing the ends of the alpha's robes by a hand's breadth as the alpha spins neatly on his heel past the guard; his own sword strikes true, shearing through the guard's neck with an arcing spray of blood. 

The second guard shouts something as the first guard's corpse drops like so much refuse and charges past the body without a glance. A ghostly, impermanent hand presses to the alpha's elbow, swinging the limb up and the blade with it, into the way of the attacking guard's sword with a heavy ringing of steel on steel. The alpha hisses as pain lights up through his wrist and elbow, his whole arm shaking with the blow as muscles tormented from hours of running the rooftops are pushed to, and beyond, their limits. The guard takes half a step back, shakes his own arm out, and readies himself for another attempt. 

His apparition slots behind him, taking his right wrist quickly but gently in one hand, his left hip in the other, and guides the young alpha through a motion that sweeps the guard's sword to the alpha's left, throwing the guard's motion off as he stumbles, and then drives the weapon down through the top of his collar into his chest. The guard's death is dealt savagely, and the alpha cannot help the satisfaction that pours through him as the ruby red of the guard's light under the Eagle's Eyes blinks out. Distractedly, he feels his apparition tug at him, trying to get him to move, to pull the blade free and step out of the way of something whistling at high speed— 

The broad side of the waraxe takes him across the right side of the chest, and it is only that the young alpha was beginning to move at his apparition's direction that he does not break half of his ribs, rolling with the speed of the hit. It leaves his father's weapon buried to the hilt in the falling body of the guard, wrenching at the alpha's heart as if the sword was left in him instead of his fallen foe. 

The hold his instincts have on him breaks like a pane of glass and suddenly all Ezio can take in is the noise. 

"Get the boy! Take him down!" 

"Death to the traitors!" 

"Ezio, you have to get out of here!" 

"Murderer!" 

"Traitors!" 

"They should all die!" 

"The boy! Get the boy!" 

"Never let a murderer live!" 

"Ezio, we have to go!" 

Blindly, Ezio obeys that voice, standing through the pain of what will surely be spectacular bruises, and following the tug of intangible hands against his sleeve and around his shoulder. The crowd parts around him, nearly tripping over each other, as every person turns to run from the two bloody corpses and the brute, who Ezio can hear thundering behind him. Ahead, the white of Desmond's doublet makes the ghostly man almost too easy to follow as he darts up the wall of one of the buildings around the square, to the roofs where they have the advantage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried so very, very hard to keep the other male Auditores alive. But the way the story wanted to go meant they had to face their same canon fate...
> 
> Also, I'm hopeful I'll be able to post on June 9th as expected. The next chapter is giving me a lot more trouble than I expected though.


End file.
